Recipe 12.9 Creating Actions

12.9.1 Problem

You want to create menu items and toolbar buttons and connect Java code to them.

12.9.2 Solution

Create a new action, add menu items and toolbar buttons, and implement what you want to have happen in Java.

12.9.3 Discussion

Building upon the example developed in the previous two recipes, we'll now add menu items and a toolbar button to the plug-in. Right-click Action Set 1 in the Extensions box of the plug-in manifest editor and select New Action. In the Properties view, set the label property to Action 1, the toolTip property to This action is functional., and the id property to Action1. Next, set the menubarPath property to Menu1/Group1 and the toolbarPath property to Group1. That connects the action to the menu item and toolbar button.

To connect the action to code, select the action, Action 1, in the Extensions box, and click the ellipsis (...) button that appears when you select the class property in the Properties view. This opens the Java Attribute Editor shown in Figure 12-21.

Figure 12-21. Creating an action class

Select the "Generate a new Java class" radio button, enter org.cookbook.ch12.MenuPlugInFromScratch in the "Package name" box (or click the Browse button and select that package), and name the class Action1, as shown in the figure. Then click Finish. This creates the new action and adds its Java support file, Action1.java, to the project.

12.9.4 See Also

Recipe 12.7 on responding to user actions in a plug-in; Recipe 12.10 on coding a plug-in action; Chapter 11 of Eclipse (O'Reilly).