[//]: # (title: Surround With)

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To support the _Surround With_ action, the plugin needs to register one or more implementations of the [`SurroundDescriptor`](%gh-ic%/platform/lang-api/src/com/intellij/lang/surroundWith/SurroundDescriptor.java) interface in the `com.intellij.lang.surroundDescriptor` extension point.
Each of the surround descriptors defines a possible type of code fragment that can be surrounded - for example, one surround descriptor can handle surrounding expressions, and another can handle statements.
Each surround descriptor, in turn, contains an array of [`Surrounder`](%gh-ic%/platform/lang-api/src/com/intellij/lang/surroundWith/Surrounder.java) objects, defining specific templates which can be used for surrounding the selected code fragment (for example, _Surround With if_, _Surround With for_, and so on).

When the <menupath>Code | Surround With...</menupath> action is invoked, the IDE queries all surround descriptors for the language until it finds one that returns a non-empty array from its `getElementsToSurround()` method.
Then it calls the [`Surrounder.isApplicable()`](%gh-ic%/platform/lang-api/src/com/intellij/lang/surroundWith/Surrounder.java) method for each surrounder in that descriptor to check if the specific template is applicable in the current context.
Once the user selects a specific surrounder from the popup menu, the [`Surrounder.surroundElements()`](%gh-ic%/platform/lang-api/src/com/intellij/lang/surroundWith/Surrounder.java) method is used to execute the surround action.

**Example:**
[`SurroundDescriptor`](%gh-ic%/plugins/groovy/src/org/jetbrains/plugins/groovy/lang/surroundWith/GroovySurroundDescriptor.java) for Groovy plugin

> See the [](live_templates.md) and [](advanced_postfix_templates.md#surround-postfix-templates) sections for information on how to support code surrounding with other IDE features.
>
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