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How to display erreor messages? [message #1587604]

Tue, 27 January 2015 07:54

Eclipse User

Hello,

I am developing an eclipse plugin for the first time. I need to include some code in this plugin to display error messages when something goes wrong, so that the user executing the plugin gets aware of the problem.
How can it be done?

Patrick

Re: How to display erreor messages? [message #1588062 is a reply to message #1587604]

Tue, 27 January 2015 13:32

Eclipse User

Have you done any research into how to do this? There are a few different ways to skin that cat, so it would be helpful to know what you've tried, what your UI requirements are, etc.

Re: How to display erreor messages? [message #1589587 is a reply to message #1588062]

Wed, 28 January 2015 09:38

Eclipse User

Hi Eric,

I am developing a pattern plugin for generating applications from a template. It uses JET and Java for that purpose. However, when something goes wrong during the generation, I need to display an error message (which I am not able to do for now).
I think of something very simple such as opening a pop-up with the error message inside.
It seems to me that the following instruction could help me:

org.eclipse.jface.dialogs.MessageDialog.openInformation(view, "333", "An error occurred");

But I do not know what to use for "view".

Re: How to display erreor messages? [message #1591129 is a reply to message #1589587]

Thu, 29 January 2015 05:34

Eclipse User

I found a way:
javax.swing.JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "<Message>", "<Title>", javax.swing.JOptionPane.OK_OPTION);

Re: How to display erreor messages? [message #1591412 is a reply to message #1591129]

Thu, 29 January 2015 09:11

Eclipse User

It's not advisable to use Swing in a plugin; the bridge between SWT/JFace and Swing/AWT is flaky and not a good solution if there are other options.
Does your plugin have any other UI components? Modal dialogs are generally discouraged; Eclipse is a broad platform and there can be any number of things going on at any given time; having the user interrupted with a modal dialog is usually the last resort. There are usually better options, but we'd need to know more about your plugin to make further recommendations.

Re: How to display erreor messages? [message #1591637 is a reply to message #1591412]

Thu, 29 January 2015 12:02

Eclipse User

My plugin does not have any other UI. It is intended to be used as a pattern in the pattern library of IBM Integration Designer. The code of this plugin uses JET and some Java snippets inside the JET transformation templates. It is in these Java snippets that I sometimes need to display error popups.
The swing instruction works fine and it is the first (and only) one which I was able to use. But if you can advise me a better way to display popups, I would be happy to use it instead of swing.

Re: How to display erreor messages? [message #1591894 is a reply to message #1591637]

Thu, 29 January 2015 15:19

Eclipse User

Using MessageDialog.openInformation() or openError() is one way, although not the most user-friendly way. If you read the JavaDoc or source code of MessageDialog you'll see that you can pass null as the Shell. Alternatively you can call Display.getCurrent().getActiveShell() to get the currently active Shell.
But as I said, that's kind of a brutish way to handle errors from an otherwise UI-less plugin. One better alternative would be to contribute a Problem Marker to the Problems/Markers view - like what a Java compilation problem does. Imagine if every compilation error produced a modal dialog like you're trying to do; it would be miserable to use.

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