RAP 1.0 - New and Noteworthy

Note: RAP will provide a strict subset of the established API in those namespaces.

When a request is sent to an expired or otherwise invalidated session, now a (yet very basic) HTML page informs the user what happened and provides a link to restart the session.

To deal with bad connections or temporarily unavailable servers, now a message box appears, that gives the user a chance to retry sending the request.

In case of a JavaScript error, that occurs while the server response is being processed, an error page displays the error message along with the code that caused it.

The column order can be queried and changed programmatically using getColumnOrder() and setColumnOrder(). Marking a column with setMoveable permits the user to change its order by drag and drop.

If a table is created with the SWT.VIRTUAL flag, TableItems are only realized client-side when they become visible. Even though, in most situations, using the TableViewer will be more convenient, the code below shows how the SetData event can be used to "manually" populate a VIRTUAL table.

Table table = new Table( shell, SWT.VIRTUAL );
table.addListener( SWT.SetData, new Listener() {
  public void handleEvent( final Event event ) {
    TableItem item = ( TableItem )event.item;
    int index = table.indexOf( item );
    item.setText( "Item " + index  );
  }
} );
table.setItemCount( 300 );

Additionally if there is not enough space to wrap the CoolItems a chevron will be visible to have access to the invisible items.

Some examples:

group.frame.border: 3 double #56a0ea
group.label.font: 12 bold Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif
...
button.background: #9dd0ea
button.border: 2 #1695d4
...

shell.BORDER.border: 3 #1695d4
shell.title.background: #9dd0ea
shell.title.padding: 2 5 2 2
shell.padding: 5
shell.button.margin: 0 2 8 0
...
text.BORDER.border: 1 solid #1695d4
...

For more information, see RAP Theming.

Please note that this topic is work in progress and, despite extensive testing, might lead to errors under rare circumstances. If you experience any inexplicable behavior, please let us know.

With FireFox you can see the mechanism in action: Use Ctrl +/- to change font sizes. After refreshing the session (F5) RWT adapts to the new sizes.

  ...
  FontData data = font.getFontData()[ 0 ];
  item.setFont( Font.getFont( data.getName(),
                              data.getHeight(),
                              SWT.BOLD ) );

  public Display createUI() {
    UICallBackUtil.activateUICallBack( getClass().getName() );
    final Display result = PlatformUI.createDisplay();
    PlatformUI.createAndRunWorkbench( result, new DemoWorbenchAdvisor() );
    return result;
  }

Multi-selection can now be enabled by passing the SWT.MULTI style flag to the constructor. setSelection(*), getSelection(*), select(*) and deselect(*) will respect this flag and allow you to query and manipulate the current selection.

Except for setMovable() (controls whether columns can be reordered) the TableColumn API is now complete.

The column order can be queried and changed programmatically using getColumnOrder() and setColumnOrder(). Marking a column with setMoveable permits the user to change its order by drag and drop.

If a table is created with the SWT.VIRTUAL flag, TableItems are only realized client-side when they become visible. Even though, in most situations, using the TableViewer will be more convenient, the code below shows how the SetData event can be used to "manually" populate a VIRTUAL table.

Table table = new Table( shell, SWT.VIRTUAL );
table.addListener( SWT.SetData, new Listener() {
  public void handleEvent( final Event event ) {
    TableItem item = ( TableItem )event.item;
    int index = table.indexOf( item );
    item.setText( "Item " + index  );
  }
} );
table.setItemCount( 300 );

Though implementing a ModifyListener does not differ from SWT as You can see below, the inner workings do differ. In contrary to SWT that sends a ModifyEvent immediately, RWT uses a delay of currently 500 ms after which the server is notified about changes.

  Text text = new Text( parent, RWT.SINGLE );
  text.addModifyListener( new ModifyListener() {
    public void modifyText( ModifyEvent event ) {
      // update model with changed text
    }
  } );

The screenshot below is taken from the RWT online demo, feel free to try it out yourself.

When adding a FocusListener to a control, it will be notified about focusLost and focusGained events.

As of now, not all controls do visually indicate that they currently are focused.

• The setTextLimit and getTextLimit methods can be use to control and query the number of characters that may be entered.
• All methods to control the text selection like setSelection and getSelection are implemented.

The following snippet, taken from the SelectionListener of the Show Selection button,

  Point sel= result.getSelection();
  String selText = text.getSelectionText();
  String msg = "Selection from " + sel.x + " to " + sel.y + " is " + selText;
  label.setText( msg );

leads to what is shown below

    String title = "Input Dialog";
    String mesg = "Enter at least five characters";
    String def = "default text";
    final InputDialog dlg;
    dlg = new InputDialog( getShell(), title, mesg, def, val );
    int returnCode = dlg.open();
    if( returnCode == InputDialog.OK ) {
      inputDlgResLabel.setText( "Input Result: " + dlg.getValue() );
    } else {
      inputDlgResLabel.setText( "No Result" );
    }

>>>

• Action and Contribution infrastructure
• Dialogs
  • IconAndMessageDialog
  • TrayDialog
  • TitleAreaDialog
  • PopupDialog
  • ErrorDialog
  • MessageDialogWithToggle
  • StatusDialog
  • ProgressIndicator
  • ProgressMonitorDialog
• Layouts
  • GridDataFactory
• Resources
  • Color-, Font- and ImageRegistry
• Viewers
  • ArrayContentProvider
  • DecoratingLabelProvider, ILabelDecorator, LabelDecorator (only text yet)
  • DoubleClickEvent (for Treeviewer)
  • ViewerFilter
• Wizard framework

There are many more things in the JFace 3.3 codebase - just get it and play around with it. We're open for all bug reports regarding the (new) components.

Note that some of the components (like DoubleClickEvent, ViewerFilter or the Wizard framework) are now part of the demo application.

RAP JFace implementation related to the following packages is excluded:

• Keys & Bindings
• Celleditors,
• Owner Drawing
• Field Assists

Most of them will follow but there is a need for some new infrastructure first. At the moment, you'll find the Java files of the excluded components but they are commented out to avoid confusion using "Organize Imports" or "Open Type".

>>>

Here is a screenshot:

• InputDialog

• MessageDialog

• ErrorDialog

Due to the distributed nature of RAP, the way how the result is passed back to the caller differs from JFace. RAP JFace provides an IWindowCallback interface whose windowClosed method is called with the returnCode as a parameter when a dialog was closed.

// Create the Drill Down Adapter
drillDownAdapter = new DrillDownAdapter(viewer);

// Add the options to the view's toolbar (IToolBarManager)
drillDownAdapter.addNavigationActions(manager);

After adding them to the IToolbarManager of your view, they are looking like this:

Thanks to the donation of a Fortune 500 corporation we were able to acquire additional resources to have editor support implemented for M5.

Another way is - like you know it from the Eclipse Workbench - to use the "Show View" menu. To implement it in your RAP application, use ContributionItemFactory.VIEWS_SHORTLIST.create(IWorkbenchWindow); to get a list of all view shortcuts of the current perspective which can be used in a MenuManager. But don't forget to add the commonly used views as shortcuts to your perspective (see IPageLayout#addShowViewShortcut("your.view.id")).

For all the views without a shortcut, there is a "Other..." item appended to the end of the list to display the so loved "Show View" dialog where you can browse all available views. HINT: Now you can also categorize your views - just define the category attribute in your view extension.

public class Perspective implements IPerspectiveFactory {

  public void createInitialLayout(IPageLayout layout) {
    String editorArea = layout.getEditorArea();
    layout.setEditorAreaVisible(false);
    layout.addStandaloneView(NavigationView.ID,  false, IPageLayout.LEFT, 0.25f, editorArea);
    IFolderLayout folder = layout.createFolder("messages", IPageLayout.TOP, 0.5f, editorArea);
    folder.addPlaceholder(View.ID + ":*");
    folder.addView(View.ID);
    layout.getViewLayout(NavigationView.ID).setCloseable(false);
  }
}

  public void showAdditionalView(IWorkbenchWindow window) {
    try {
      window.getActivePage().showView(
                            "org.eclipse.rap.demo.DemoBrowserViewPart",
                            "two" ,
                            IWorkbenchPage.VIEW_ACTIVATE );
    } catch (PartInitException e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
    }
  }

The corresponding extension points org.eclipse.ui.browser.browsers and org.eclipse.ui.browserSupport as provided by RCP are not yet available.

action.setImageDescriptor(PlatformUI.getWorkbench().getSharedImages().
				getImageDescriptor(ISharedImages.IMG_OBJS_INFO_TSK));

getViewSite().getActionBars().getMenuManager().add(yourAction);

In the end, this could look like this:

  protected void fillStatusLine( final IStatusLineManager statusLine ) {
    statusLine.add( aboutAction );
  }

To hide the statusline use:

  public void preWindowOpen() {
    IWorkbenchWindowConfigurer configurer = getWindowConfigurer();
    configurer.setShowStatusLine( false );
  [...]

IStatus s = new Status(IStatus.ERROR, "org.demo", "This should not happen.", new NullPointerException());
StatusManager.getManager().handle(s, StatusManager.SHOW | StatusManager.LOG );

You can specify SHOW, LOG or both. With the SHOW style bit, a nice error dialog will pop up to inform the user about the exception.

The logfile of your application can be found in <working directory>/workspace/.metadata/.log where "working directory" is the directory you specified on the "Arguments" tab of your launch configuration.

Also see Platform UI Error Handling for more information on this topic.

While the first one should be very familiar to RCP developers, the second one provides an infrastructure to bind your action sets to specfic workbench parts. This means you can active / deactive specfic action sets only for specfic parts. See also the extension point description for action sets and the actionSetPartAssociations.

Additionally you can contribute new action sets to existing perspectives with the help of perspectiveExtensions.

When using the progress API you should make sure to enable the ProgressIndicator in your WindowAdvisor:

     public void preWindowOpen() {
       IWorkbenchWindowConfigurer configurer = getWindowConfigurer();
       configurer.setShowProgressIndicator( true );
       ...

The standard progress view is also available, you can embed it into your application like this:

     <view
           class="org.eclipse.ui.ExtensionFactory:progressView"
           icon= "icons/pview.gif"
           id="org.eclipse.ui.views.ProgressView"
           name="Progress">
     </view>

Just use IPartService#addPartListener(IPartListener) as the following examples shows it:

IWorkbenchWindow window = PlatformUI.getWorkbench().getActiveWorkbenchWindow();
window.getActivePage().addPartListener(new IPartListener2() {

	public void partActivated(IWorkbenchPartReference partRef) {
		String partId = partRef.getId());
		// do something useful
	}

	...
});

// Create the Drill Down Adapter
drillDownAdapter = new DrillDownAdapter(viewer);

// Add the options to the view's toolbar (IToolBarManager)
drillDownAdapter.addNavigationActions(manager);

After adding them to the IToolbarManager of your view, they are looking like this:

• ColumnLayout and TableWrapLayout
• ExpandableComposite and Section
• Hyperlink, ImageHyperlink (yet without actually showing the image) and HyperlinkGroup
• TreeNode, Twistie and their common ancestor ToggleHyperlink
• ScrolledPageBook
• Form and ScrolledForm, FormToolkit
• Form editors (FormEditor, FormPage, SharedHeaderFormEditor)