The File > Manage > Get Info permissions dialog now displays checkboxes to toggle SetUID, SetGID, and sticky bits.

In 2.4.0, eXide jettisoned its longstanding “pretty-printing” library, now useing eXist’s built-in serialization methods. This change means improved whitespace accuracy and speed when viewing your query results, and turns eXide into a serialization sandbox. By toggling the output methods via the “Output” dropdown menu, you can serialize query results not just as Adaptive, JSON, XML, or the old “direct” (rendered) method, but also as Text, HTML5, XHTML, XHTML5, and MicroXML. The new “Indent” checkbox lets you toggle whether query results are indented or not.

Also with 2.4.0, eXide supports XQuery 3.1’s “Adaptive” serialization method, which displays all XDM data types: not just XML elements, but free-standing attribute nodes, maps, arrays, and functions. (Read more about Adaptive Output.)

eXide constantly validates code while you edit an XQuery. It combines a client-side XQuery parser (xqlint) with the errors reported by the eXist-db server.

Validation on the server finds errors across all related modules, while the client-side parsing provides the syntax tree required for sophisticated refactoring, context-sensitive code completion etc.

In XQuery mode, pressing the tab key after typing a few characters calls context-sensitive code completion. The suggestions shown depend on the context:

• if the character sequence starts with a $, search for possible variable expansions
• if it matches a code snippet, insert it
• all other cases: show functions matching the entered prefix

A popup will be shown if there's more than one possible completion. Otherwise the code is just inserted.

As an alternative to the tab key, you can also press Ctrl-Space, Cmd-Space or Option-Space (Mac). Unlike tab, this will also work if the cursor is placed in white space or inside the prefix or namespace declarations of an import module or declare namespace expression.

Snippets are triggered by pressing tab after typing a known keyword. For example, to create a new XQuery function, type fun and press tab. A snippet may have one or more parameters to change: after insertion, the function name will be selected so you can edit it. Pressing tab will move to the next snippet parameter. Press ESC when you are done editing parameters.

Code snippets are available in XQuery, HTML, Javascript, CSS and Less mode. To see all snippet keywords in XQuery mode, press Ctrl-Space or Cmd-Space after a whitespace.

The snippet definitions use the same syntax as the textmate editor (a well-known editor on the mac). Feel free to edit them. All snippet files reside in the templates collection inside the eXide collection.

When writing XQuery code, one often ends up with long FLWOR expressions or markup with lots of enclosed XQuery. In good functional style you want to clean this up and extract code into functions. eXide 2.0 simplifies this by providing refactorings for functions and variables.

To extract code into a function, select it in the editor (the block has to be syntactically valid) and choose XQuery/Extract function from the menu or press Ctrl-Shift-X or Cmd-Ctrl-X (Mac). A new function will be created with all dependant variables transformed into parameters. At the same time the code block is replace with a matching function call and your cursor is duplicated and placed at the function names, so you can just start typing and edit both. Press ESC once you are done.

Extracting a variable works in a similar way. Just press Ctrl-Shift-E or Cmd-Ctrl-E after selecting a valid code block.

To rename a variable or function, just place the cursor inside a variable or function name, either in its declaration or any reference to it. Press Ctrl-Alt-R or Cmd-Ctrl-R. eXide finds all occurrences of the variable or function in the current scope (other variables with the same name are not affected) and creates a new cursor for each of them. Start changing the name and you'll see how all other occurrences change as well!

To rename an XML element, place the cursor inside the tag name of the start or end tag. This also works in XML and HTML mode!

Press ESC when you are done.

eXide continually parses the XQuery code while you type and displays an error or warning icon in the gutter of the corresponding line. But instead of just complaining, eXide is able to suggest a quick fix for some types of warnings or errors. To see if a quick fix is available, click on the icon or press the quick fix shortcut (Ctrl-Shift-Q or Command-Ctrl-Q) to see a list of suggestions. Quick fixes are available for (we'll add more over time):

• undeclared namespaces
• calls to unknown functions
• unknown variables
• unused namespaces or module imports

In XQuery mode, eXide knows all reachable functions either in the current module or any imported one. To navigate to a function declaration, place the cursor inside the function name of a call and press Ctrl-F3 or Cmd-F3.

To quickly navigate to any known function or variable declaration, press Ctrl-Shift-U or Cmd-Shift-U and choose a target from the popup. Btw, within the popup, just type to limit the displayed list to items containing the typed string.

There are two ways to quickly import another XQuery module into the current code:

1. Choose the "Import Module" dialog from the menu or type F4
2. Create an "import module" statement (type "import" and press tab) and enter the prefix. When you are within the quotes for the namespace URI, press Ctrl-Space or Cmd-Space to call autocomplete. This should pop up any module currently stored in the db which matches the prefix you entered.

When developing an XQuery application, enable Live Reload and the browser tab or window containing the application's web page will automatically reload whenever you save a resource belonging to the app's package.

Just start the app via the Application/Run app menu entry and check activate live reload.

Note: due to browser security restrictions, live reload will only work if the app window has been opened from within eXide, not via the dashboard. A web page cannot control other windows unless it created them.

Drag a file on the editor to open its contents in a new tab.

Use File > Manage > Upload Files > Upload Directory to upload entire directories and preserve their structure. Or drag and drop onto the Upload Files pane.