Applying advanced exclusions to your project analysis

Let's say you have generated class files in your Java project that you wish to exclude. The files look something like this:

@Generated("com.example.generated")

public class GeneratedClass extends AnotherClass {

    // Some generated code

}

To exclude all such files, you might set the Ignore Issues on Files parameter to the following regular expression: @Generated\(".*"\)

Blocks to be ignored are delimited within the file by start and end strings specified by regular expression patterns: 

• If the first regular expression is found but not the second one, the end of the file is considered to be the end of the block.
• Regular expressions are not matched across multiple lines.

Any block - within any file - containing at least one of the specified patterns will be ignored.

1. Retrieve your project.
2. Go to Project Settings > General Settings > Analysis scope.
3. In D. Issue Exclusions > Ignore Issues in Blocks, enter and save a block definition.
4. You can enter a second block definition and so on.

You can use block delimiters to specify the block to be excluded as illustrated below. In this example, you want to ignore the code in the method doSomethingElse below delimited by // BEGIN-NOSCAN and // END-NOSCAN.

public class MyClass {
    public MyClass() {
        ...
    }
    public void doSomething() {
        ...
    }
    // BEGIN-NOSCAN
    public void doSomethingElse()
    {
        ...
    }
    // END-NOSCAN
}

You could define the block to be excluded with the following regular expressions:

• Start of block: \s*//\s*START-NOSCAN
• End of block: \s*//\s*END-NOSCAN

These regular expressions ensure that the start and end block delimiters will be recognized regardless of the number of spaces around the line comment characters (//).

To exclude specific files from specific coding rules, you can:

• Exclude specific files from the check against specific coding rules.
  To do so, you define exclusion criteria. An exclusion criterion is a combination of:
  • A coding rule key pattern: specifies the coding rules to be excluded.
  • A file path pattern: specifies the files to which the specified coding rules will not be applied.
• Apply the check against specific coding rules to specific files. It means that the other files are excluded from this check.
  To do so, you define inclusion criteria. An inclusion criterion is a combination of:
  • A coding rule key pattern: specifies the coding rules to be applied.
  • A file path pattern: specifies the files to which the specified rules will be applied. The specified rules will not be applied to the other files.

1. Retrieve your project.
2. Go to Project Settings > General Settings > Analysis scope.
3. In the D. Issue Exclusions > Ignore Issues on Multiple Criteria parameter (to define an exclusion criterion), or in Restrict Scope of Coding Rules (to define an inclusion criteria), enter and save a pair consisting of (see Defining matching patterns):
   • A pattern for coding rule keys.
   • A pattern for file paths.
4. You can add a second criterion, and so on.