Eclipse content assist not working in some parts of code

Question

I am using Eclipse Juno and have never had any problems with it, until its content assist stopped working only in some parts of my code. The code below shows what I am talking about:

mWTBatch.setText("Here content assist works");
medCopyBtn.addActionListener(new ActionListener()
{
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
    {
        mWTBatch.setText(mRTBatch.getText());
        mWTExp.setText(mRTExp.getText());
        mWTName.setText(mRTName.getText());
        mWTQuantity.setText(mRTQuantity.getText());
        /* Here content assist is not working */
    }
});
mWTBatch.setText("Here it is working again");

That piece of code is just inside one method of my class. The problem is that it works fine inside the methods of the class, but inside objects (new ActionListener(){}) it returns "No default proposals". It has this behavior when I either use "Ctrl+space" or type in "." after the object I want to get suggestions of. I've already searched here for the solution and googled it, but couldn't find a solution. What I have already tried:

• Window->Preferences->Editor->Content Assist->Advanced and checked Java Proposals. It didn't work. I've even tried checking it myself, without just using Restore Defaults. I also tried the Java Proposals from the other table. Nothing. At last I tried checking all the fields with Java on them. Nothing worked.
• Deleted my workspace folder completely, created a new one and imported my project. As my project is from an SVN repository, I used the project folder inside "trunk" folder, but I didn't copy the content of the folder to the workspace when importing (I need it to be in the repository). Still nothing, it continues with the error.
• I reproduced the same situation of the code above into another class of another different project, which was also imported to the workspace, but having its content copied to it. The content assist worked for that one.
• I then re-imported the project with the original code from above, but this time copying its content to workspace (which means it had nothing to do anymore with the SVN repository). It didn't work either.
• I also checked if the ctrl+space is bind to the content assist on Eclipse settings and it is ok. I also checked if it had nothing to do with advanced key settings of Windows 7 language bar. I had seen on the internet that could be problem, but it was not my case.
• I even created a new Java project on the workspace and copied the .java files one by one from the old project, set all the build path manually and in the end it still doesn't work.

For all the first four cases above I also cleaned the projects and closed and reopened them, not forgetting to refresh it after each action. Could anyone tell me how to fix this? I would like to find a solution to this problem, so that others may not be like me on it for 2 days. I think my question is important because I am gathering here many probable solutions found by googling the problem and from StackOverflow, and nothing solved it.

Answer 1

I stumbled into this issue the other day, and after seeing this post thought that I'd have to just live with it.

However, I did find a "hack" around it:

mWTBatch.setText("Here content assist works");
medCopyBtn.addActionListener(   //<---------------------- Problem arises because we're inside a function declaration ...
    new ActionListener()
    {   // <--------------------------------------------- ... yet we're trying to write a function
        public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
        {
            /* Here content assist is not working */
        }
    }
);
mWTBatch.setText("Here it is working again");

From the content assistants point of view, this is just plain wrong, so we need to give it a little help:

mWTBatch.setText("Here content assist works");
medCopyBtn.addActionListener(
    new ActionListener()
        // <--------------------------------------------- CURLY BRACKET MISSING
        public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
        {
            /* Here content assist IS WORKING */
        }
    }
);
mWTBatch.setText("Here it is still working");

This will obviously give you an error upon compilation time, but it gives you full access to the content assist for the rest of the function declaration. Also, it doesn't matter which curly bracket you remove from inside the function declaration, so long as it's an opening curly bracket.

One other point, if you only remove the opening curly bracket like I did above, then eclipse will NOT add in another closing curly bracket automatically for most cases (because by the time you enter the new opening curly bracket, you've equalised the opening vr closing of curly brackets). You can get around this by deleting the closing curly bracket as well, but then you have to remember to put two curly brackets back.

Hope that helps the 1165 views this question has garnered over the past year =)

Answer 2

Do a search for "Change display language" on the start menu. 'Change keyboards' > Look to see if you have any non English keyboards under 'General' > 'Installed services'. If you have more than just English then pressing Ctrl+Spacebar is changing your focus from Eclipse to the language selector on the taskbar. Remove any other keyboard languages from the list if that is your problem.