Know your tools: $SELECTION$ in Intellij IDEA

I have used and created Live Templates before but I didn’t know about the special keyword $SELECTION$. I found out after reading IntelliJ IDEA / Android Studio Tricks: Surround With by Ivan Morgillo.

In short, when a template gets invoked, $SELECTION$ gets replaced by whatever is selected at that moment.

I won’t go into details about creating a new template. You can read all about it at Ivan’s post. But when you learn how to create one then add the following:

This way you can do something like this:

PS: the $END$ keyword is another special one that pinpoints where the cursor will stop after adding values for an invoked template