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9.5. Using Textual Rule Editor
In the Package Explorer, you can double-click your existing rule file to open it on a textual rule editor or choose → → to create a new rule on the textual editor. The textual rule editor has a pattern of a normal text editor and this is where you modify and manage your rules. .
The textual rule editor works on files that have a
.drl (or .rule) extension. Usually these contain related rules, but it is also possible to have rules in individual files, grouped by being in the same package namespace. These DRL files are plain text files. Even if your rule group is using a domain specific language (DSL), the rules are still stored as plain text. This allows easy management of rules and versions.
Textual editor provides features like:
- Content assistance: The pop-up content assistance helps you quickly create rule attributes such as functions, import statements, and package declarations. You can invoke pop-up content assistance by pressing
Ctrl+Space. - Code folding: Code Folding allows you to hide and show sections of a file use the icons with minus and plus on the left vertical line of the editor.
- Sysnchronization with outline view: The text editor is in sync with the structure of the rules in the outline view as soon as you save your rules. The outline view provides a quick way of navigating around rules by name, or even in a file containing hundreds of rules. The items are sorted alphabetically by default.
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