Recipe 13.5 Adding Items to a View

13.5.1 Problem

You've created a plug-in that supports a view, and you want to add items to that view.

13.5.2 Solution

If you've created the plug-in with a PDE template, just customize the initialize method.

13.5.3 Discussion

How you customize the items in a view depends on whether you've based that view on an SWT table or an SWT tree. In the example developed in the previous recipe, ViewPlugIn, our view was based on a tree. You create the tree structure under a TreeParent object named invisibleRoot in the initialize method of SampleView.java. The following code creates a tree of nodes in the view (note that in a real application, you'd build this tree to reflect your data model).

private void initialize( ) {
    TreeObject to1 = new TreeObject("Item 1");
    TreeObject to2 = new TreeObject("Item 2");
    TreeObject to3 = new TreeObject("Item 3");
    TreeObject to4 = new TreeObject("Item 4");
    TreeParent p1 = new TreeParent("Parent 1");
    p1.addChild(to1);
    p1.addChild(to2);
    p1.addChild(to3);
    p1.addChild(to4);
         
    TreeObject to5 = new TreeObject("Item 5");
    TreeParent p2 = new TreeParent("Parent 2");
    p2.addChild(to4);
         
    TreeParent root = new TreeParent("Root");
    root.addChild(p1);
    root.addChild(p2);
         
    invisibleRoot = new TreeParent("");
    invisibleRoot.addChild(root);
    }
}

This configures the tree object that will appear in the view. To make these items actually do something when clicked (with either mouse button) or double-clicked, see the following recipe.

13.5.4 See Also

Recipe 13.4 on creating a plug-in that supports views; Recipe 13.6 on configuring the actions for a view; Chapter 11 and Chapter 12 of Eclipse (O'Reilly).