Structural Search and Replace

Search for a target structurally

1. From the main menu, select Edit | Find | Search Structurally.

2. In the Structural Search dialog, do one of the following:

   • Create your own template from scratch.

     In the editor area, enter the code pattern ($variable$ that represent your code), click the icon and select Save Template to save it for future use.

     

     PhpStorm adds the created template to the existing template list (User Defined node) in the Existing Templates dialog.

   • Use one of the existing templates to act as a prototype.

     Click the icon, select Existing Templates to open the list of predefined templates and select the appropriate one.

     Consider the following example class:

     class ExampleClass { public function WRONG() { } public function right() { } }

     Let's find a certain method in the class.

     In the list of existing templates, select the All public methods of the class template under PHP | General.

     

     Click OK to return back to the Structural Search dialog to work with the selected template.

     

     Click OK to return back to the Structural Search dialog to work with the template you have selected further.

3. To add some condition for the template, in the editor area, position the caret at the code item. The popup with the Edit Filters link appears.

   

4. Click the link to open the filter area where you can add your conditions.

   For example, let's add a condition for the $Field$ variable.

5. In the filter area, click the icon to add a new condition. If, for example, you need to add regular expressions, select Text. You can also add other conditions depending on your variable.

6. In the field that opens, type your condition.

   For example, let's type the following regular expression:

   \b[a-z]\w+\b

   

   In this case when you select the Match case checkbox in the Structural Search dialog, PhpStorm will only search for lower case words.

   Also note, that by default, the Recursive checkbox is selected. That means that PhpStorm performs the recursive search and all nested items will be included in the results.

7. Specify the following options to narrow the search further:

   • File type - use the drop-down list to select which file types should be a part of the search. In our case, it is Java.

   • Scope - specify where to search: in a project, module, directory or select a custom scope.

   • Search target - you can select Complete match to match the exact template or other available code elements (in our case it is b).

     

8. Click OK.

PhpStorm displays the results in the Find tool window.

You can add the newly created search template to structural search inspections as a custom template and use it later to inspect your code.

Replace a target structurally

1. From the main menu, select Edit | Find | Replace Structurally.

2. In the Replace Structurally dialog, add new or existing templates to the search and replace template areas. You can save the replace template the same way as the search one.

3. If you need to add a filter for the variable in the replace template, place a caret at the variable of interest and in the popup that appears, click the Edit filter link.

   

4. In the filter area, depending on what your chose as a filter, specify the condition.

5. To narrow down your replace results, select the following options:

   • Shorten fully-qualified names. Replaces fully qualified class names with short names and imports.

   • Reformat. Reformats the replaced code.

   • Use static import - uses static import in replacement when possible.

   After specifying the necessary options, click Find. PhpStorm displays the results in the Find tool window.

6. In the Find tool window, your can work with the results further, replacing found items one by one, all of them at once, or you can check a preview of your potential changes.