After a quite long struggle with the known and unfortunately one of the few help articles about controlling properties, tabbed properties etc. (links below), I have decided to ask for your help.
What I need to do seems not that hard, but, well, I just couldn't bring the pieces together. So the problem is:
I want to extend the existing properties view of Eclipse (PropertySheet) with some further tabs, which will be later on filled with certain information from EMF objects, which in the end implement IAdaptable. So they can be queried for PropertySources and there are already a few tabs, sections extended in the corresponding project in its manifest, which are being successfully gathered from the Selection Listener of the PropertiesView.
Here comes the tricky part: I don't need to extend this project further, by defining further tabbed properties in its manifest. I need to implement a seperate plug-in project, which does this extension job for the other main project. I don't need extra views or so. This existing project provides the property sources and like sad has its own designed tabbed property view via its extensions.
I have actually become quite familiar with the concept of the views and properties, I can build some Property Sources and let the Properties View gather/show/manipulate the properties.
But this idea, letting an external plug-in extend the Properties View with tabs of an another EMF-based plug-in project, just can't get to me. I am really confused and don't know with what to begin with.
I would be unbelievably glad, if you could point me to the right direction.
Thanks a lot!
*Links:
http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Properties-View/properties-view.html
http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Tabbed-Properties/tabbed_properties_view.html
Related
When editing a .xib in Xcode, I can select a view or other object, navigate to the "Bindings" tab in the Inspector, and bind its properties to properties of other objects. This is all well and good, but if I create my own subclass and add new properties, those properties won't appear in the list, and I'm having trouble finding an up-to-date solution for adding them.
I'm aware that I can create the binding at runtime using bind:toObject:withKeyPath:options:, but that doesn't seem like a very elegant solution, as it's clunkier than setting up a binding normally is, and adding glue code kind of defeats the purpose of using bindings. The only method I've seen is to create something called an IBPlugin, but I'm hearing Xcode stopped supporting IBPlugins ages ago when it and Interface Builder were merged into a single program.
So how can I do this? I tried #IBInspectable, which makes properties settable in the inspector, but it doesn't look like that makes them bindable.
How to model a toolbar ONCE and render it in some Parts/Views (not in the default place which is the window!)? Using the model level (and maybe Addons?)
I have currently
Eclipse 2022.03-4.23
Application.e4xmi with that Toolbar but
Gets added dynamically using an Addon that listens to "PART_ADDED" event topic which
Leads to a NPE due to other event topic "UIEvents.Part.TOPIC_TOOLBAR" within a framework method in a class called LazyStackRenderer
So the guy before me had written an Addon to dynamically add the Toolbar to the parts. Maybe to make the buttons save/print per part or because the main layout has two stacks and only the parts stack is relevant.
Appreciate any help! I searched a lot but no success!
I solved it so far. The dynamically created MParts were not added as children to the container (in my case the PartStack) in the first place and also had to comment the adding of placeholder objects that carry the same information of the parts. This dynamic step was done as a reaction to the topic #UIEventTopic(UIEvents.UILifeCycle.APP_STARTUP_COMPLETE) in some written Addon.
I am not a 100% sure that discarding the placeholders is safe but still this is the best trail I have ever reached.
I hope this would help others!
Thank you #greg-449
I would like to know. How I can dynamically choose view? I would like to make the PropertyGrid in my application. The PropertyGrid should must change when user selects object. As I understand for this task I have to use a DataTemplate but how I can dynamically create DataTemplate in code? The fact is that I use plug-ins and View and ViewModel for each plugin located in separate dll and so I can't directly write DataTemplate in PropertyesViewModel.
How can I make the edit properties for each plugin using the Propertygrid if I can't use a DataTemplate?
For Catel it doesn't matter in which assemblies the views / view models are located since it uses relative naming conventions. However, if you want to show a custom view based on logic that might reside inside a plugin, I think this is out of scope for Catel.
To solve this issue, you must implement a custom service that can communicate with the plugins and resolve the right view for a selected object. One solution might be naming conventions (if it's a PersonModel, you might want to show the PersonPropertiesView and PersonPropertiesViewModel). However, this must be a custom service.
I need to create dynamically buttons in main toolbar. I found a solution, but I can create just one button (dynamic contribution item - class extending ContributionItem). But I need to create more than one button, but I cannot find the solution.
I'm fighting with task to create plugin, which parses a XML file containing structure of menu and toolbars. We've already done this plugin for Visual Studio. Its quite easy in principle, but I found swiftly, that not for Eclipse. There is one small but critical otherness. Plugins are implemented declaratively in Eclipse. The file plugin.xml is the gist of plugin's infrastructure, Java code is just ancillary.
The customer wants to refresh the menu and toolbar whenever the selected project is changed. Eclipse lacks several features needed to get the task done. Main menu and main toolbar are cteated at Eclipse's start-up and then they can be hardly rebuilt.
In the most cases the conditions defined at enabledWhen/visibleWhen elements are sufficient to filter contributions according to the context (active part, selected object, whatever else).
If you need to have more freedom, please try E4 ToolControl that allows you to implement your own UI elements:
#PostConstruct
public void createControls(Composite parent) {
//your custom code here
}
More details here https://www.vogella.com/tutorials/EclipseRCP/article.html#toolcontrols
From my understanding you want to have different buttons on the main toolbar depending on the selection of the project explorer (eg. 1 project is java project, the other is javascript etc.). First you will have to contribute to the main toolbar. I think there are some tutorial available so google will help.
The main steps are:
1. create a command (org.eclipse.ui.commmands)
2. create a handler (org.eclipse.ui.handlers) with the previously declared command id
3. contribute to the main toolbar (org.eclipse.ui.menus) with menucontribution and commandId with the following locationURI: toolbar:org.eclipse.ui.main.toolbar?after=misc
showing/hiding, enabling/disabling a menu item/button also can be done declaratively or "mixed". Declaratively means eg. using enabledWhen/visibleWhen...
Mixed means using property tester (org.eclipse.core.expressions.propertyTester). With this you can define your "enablement logic" in Java code.
In Eclipse e4 the UI is generated from a, EMF based, model. The Application.e4xmi serves as a base for that model. Contributions to the model can be done via fragments, which are again XML, or via processors. Processors are written in Java and use e4 services, like the part service, to modify the model at runtime.
I think you want to write a processor that parses your custom XML and modifies the eclipse e4 model accordingly.
I'm a beginner with Eclipse RCP and I'm trying to build an application for myself to give it a go. I'm confused about how one actually goes about handling model objects. None of the examples I can find deal with the problem I'm having, so I suspect I'm going about it the wrong way.
Say I need to initialise the application with a class that holds authenticated user info. I used my WorkbenchWindowAdvisor (wrong place?) to perform some initialisation (e.g. authentication) to decide what view to show. Once that's done, a view is shown. Now, that view also needs access to the user info I had earlier retrieved/produced.
The question is, how is that view supposed to get that data? The view is wired up in the plugin.xml. I don't see any way I can give the data to the view. So I assume the view has to retrieve it somehow. But what's the proper place for it to retrieve it from? I thought of putting static variables in the IApplication implementation, but that felt wrong. Any advice or pointers much appreciated. Thanks.
The problem you are facing here is in my opinion not RCP related. Its more an architectural problem. Your view is wired with business logicand!
The solution can be done by two (common) design-patterns:
Model-View-Controler (MVC)
Model-View-Presenter (MVP)
You can find plenty information about this in the web. I am going to point a possible solution for your particular problem using MVP.
You will need to create several projects. One is of course an RCP plugin, lets call it rcp.view. Now you create another one, which doesnt make UI contributions (only org.eclipse.core.runtime to start with) and call it rcp.presenter. To simplify things, this plugin will also be the model for now.
Next steps:
Add the rcp.presenter to the
dependencies of rcp.view (its
important that the presenter has no
reference to the view)
Export all packages that you are
going to create in the rcp.presenter
so they are visible
In rcp.presenter create an interface
IPerspective that has some methods
like (showLogiDialog(), showAdministratorViews(User user), showStandardViews(User user))
Create a class PerspectivePresenter that takes IPerspective in the constructor and saves it in an attribute
In rcp.view go to your Perspective, implement your interface IPerspective, and in the constructor create a new reference presenter = new PerspectivePresenter(this)
call presenter.load() and implenent
this in the presenter maybe like this
code:
public void load()
{
User user = view.showLoginDialog(); // returns a user with the provided name/pw
user.login(); // login to system/database
if(user.isAdministrator())
view.showAdministratorViews(user);
else
view.showStandardViews(user);
}
As you can see, the view just creates a reference to the presenter, which is responsible for all the business logic, and the presenter tells the view what to display. So in your Perspective you implement those interface functions and in each one you can set up your Perspective in a different way.
For each View it goes in the same way, you will need a presenter for the view which performs operations and tells the view (using the interface) what to display and passing down the final data. The view doesnt care about the logic. This is also very usefull when using JFace-Databindings (then only bound data is passed to the view).
For example, the WorkbenchWindowAdisor will just create everything that is needed in the application. Other views, perspectives, then can enable/disable menus and so on depending on the data they got (like when isAdministrator you might want to enable an special adminMenu).
I know this is quite a heavy approach, but the Eclipse RCP is designed for big (as the name says rich) applications. So you should spend some time in the right architecture. My first RCP app was like you described...I never knew where to store things and how to handle all the references. At my work I learned about MVP (and I am still learning). It takes a while to understand the concept but its worth it.
You might want to look at my second post at this question to get another idea on how you could structure your plugins.