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Using XWT Views with Riena [message #552671]

Fri, 13 August 2010 06:56

Holger Hoch

Messages: 8
Registered: July 2009

Junior Member

Hi,

I'm currently investigating on how to integrate views created with XWT into Riena. In Riena each view has a corresponding controller and for each widget that has a special 'binding property' an abstract version of that widget, a so called ridget is created, injected into the controller and bound to the control.
That part was quite easy to achieve when using standard swt widgets in XWT by introducing a namespace handler that is responsible for treating special Riena properties like the above mentioned binding property. This results in quite convenient XWT code like

<Composite xmlns="http://www.eclipse.org/xwt/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://www.eclipse.org/xwt"
xmlns:riena="http://www.eclipse.org/riena">
<Label text="First Name:" x:style="SWT.NONE"></Label>
<Text text="" x:style="SWT.BORDER" riena:binding="txtFirst"/>

Integrating Riena custom widgets seems a little more complicated. I have tried the 'x:Class' and also the 'clr-namespace:...' mechanisms successfully. They are pretty ok for the end user integrating his or her private widgets, but as Riena custom widgets reside in different packages this would require the user to have multiple 'clr-namespace:...' definitions which may become quite inconvenient when using multiple custom widgets.
This is not what an end user would expect from Riena - there should be a single namespace for Riena custom attributes and widgets to enable the user to use something like

<riena:SomeRienaWidget ... riena:binding="some_binding_name"/>

for all Riena widgets, no matter where they are definded (of course it would be Rienas responsibility to register the ridgets within the namspace).

XWT MetaclassService seems to be prepared for handling different namespaces, but XWTLoader currently does not allow registering metaclasses for custom namespaces. So I subclassed XWTLoader creating a RienaXWTLoader that does the custom widget registration using

MetaclassService service = getCurrentCore().getMetaclassService();
service.register(SomeRienaCustomWidget.class, "http://www.eclipse.org/riena");

Unfortunately this did not work as the MetaclassManager.public IMetaclass getMetaclass(ILoadingContext context, String name, String namespace) method alwasy returns null if the namespace is not the default namespace or does not start with 'clr-namespace'.
Ok, a MetaclassManager subclass RienaMetaclassManager fixes that and everything seems to work fine in runtime.

But doing this registration the programmatic way during runtime means that the development time editor is not aware of the Riena namespace and widgets.
I think it would be a great enhancement in extendability if we would have an extension point to plug in custom namespaces as that could be used to make the editor aware of custom namespace and widgets at design time and allow Riena (and other frameworks) users to work without explicit definition of packages, classes etc.
If that sounds like a valid approach I could spend some time on this task...

Regards,
--Holger

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Re: Using XWT Views with Riena [message #553784 is a reply to message #552671]

Wed, 18 August 2010 20:51

Yves YANG

Messages: 688
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

Hi Holger,

I see you have investigated a lot. The integration with Enterpise
Client/Server solution is our nest step. I'm now working on the integration
of Spring DI/DM (Genini Project in eclipse) with Angelo. Could you create a
bug on this tropic for the further discussion ?

Best regards
Yves YANG
"Holger Hoch" <holger.hoch@compeople.de> wrote in message
news:i42qb7$4ht$1@build.eclipse.org...
> Hi,
>
> I'm currently investigating on how to integrate views created with XWT
> into Riena. In Riena each view has a corresponding controller and for each
> widget that has a special 'binding property' an abstract version of that
> widget, a so called ridget is created, injected into the controller and
> bound to the control.
> That part was quite easy to achieve when using standard swt widgets in XWT
> by introducing a namespace handler that is responsible for treating
> special Riena properties like the above mentioned binding property. This
> results in quite convenient XWT code like
>
> <Composite xmlns="http://www.eclipse.org/xwt/presentation"
> xmlns:x="http://www.eclipse.org/xwt"
> xmlns:riena="http://www.eclipse.org/riena">
> <Label text="First Name:" x:style="SWT.NONE"></Label>
> <Text text="" x:style="SWT.BORDER" riena:binding="txtFirst"/>
>
> Integrating Riena custom widgets seems a little more complicated. I have
> tried the 'x:Class' and also the 'clr-namespace:...' mechanisms
> successfully. They are pretty ok for the end user integrating his or her
> private widgets, but as Riena custom widgets reside in different packages
> this would require the user to have multiple 'clr-namespace:...'
> definitions which may become quite inconvenient when using multiple custom
> widgets.
> This is not what an end user would expect from Riena - there should be a
> single namespace for Riena custom attributes and widgets to enable the
> user to use something like
>
> <riena:SomeRienaWidget ... riena:binding="some_binding_name"/>
>
> for all Riena widgets, no matter where they are definded (of course it
> would be Rienas responsibility to register the ridgets within the
> namspace).
>
> XWT MetaclassService seems to be prepared for handling different
> namespaces, but XWTLoader currently does not allow registering metaclasses
> for custom namespaces. So I subclassed XWTLoader creating a RienaXWTLoader
> that does the custom widget registration using
>
> MetaclassService service = getCurrentCore().getMetaclassService();
> service.register(SomeRienaCustomWidget.class,
> "http://www.eclipse.org/riena");
>
> Unfortunately this did not work as the MetaclassManager.public IMetaclass
> getMetaclass(ILoadingContext context, String name, String namespace)
> method alwasy returns null if the namespace is not the default namespace
> or does not start with 'clr-namespace'.
> Ok, a MetaclassManager subclass RienaMetaclassManager fixes that and
> everything seems to work fine in runtime.
>
> But doing this registration the programmatic way during runtime means that
> the development time editor is not aware of the Riena namespace and
> widgets. I think it would be a great enhancement in extendability if we
> would have an extension point to plug in custom namespaces as that could
> be used to make the editor aware of custom namespace and widgets at design
> time and allow Riena (and other frameworks) users to work without explicit
> definition of packages, classes etc.
> If that sounds like a valid approach I could spend some time on this
> task...
>
> Regards,
> --Holger

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