Some questions regarding databinding

[bjoernQ]

Hello,

I have some questions regarding data binding support in SWT Designer.

1) I was trying to create a custom control based on a composite. This control contains a TableViewer. Is it possible to create this control in a way that SWT Designer understands how to bind data to the contained table?

2) How can I bind my data in a way that an image is shown instead of a label(text). e.g. there is an attribute which can be one of "1","2","3". These values represent states. I don't want to show these digits but show some nice icons to the user. Is this supported by SWT Designer?

3) How can I bind the (background) color of the table lines to the data I provide? I know that I can do it by subclassing ObservableMapLabelProvider but then I have no support for this in visual designer and I'm afraid that SWT Designer can't deal with this manually altered source code anymore.

Best regards,
Bjoern

[Eric Clayberg]

1) I was trying to create a custom control based on a composite. This control contains a TableViewer. Is it possible to create this control in a way that SWT Designer understands how to bind data to the contained table?

You can either bind to an exposed widget/view in a custom Composite or you could bind to a bean proprty of the Composite and then bind from that property to the viewer within the Composite. We provide an example of how to bind to a custom Coposite wuth embedded widget in our docs.

2) How can I bind my data in a way that an image is shown instead of a label(text). e.g. there is an attribute which can be one of "1","2","3". These values represent states. I don't want to show these digits but show some nice icons to the user. Is this supported by SWT Designer?

You should be able to convert a string to an image using your own special UpdateValueStrategy, IConverter and IValidator.

3) How can I bind the (background) color of the table lines to the data I provide? I know that I can do it by subclassing ObservableMapLabelProvider but then I have no support for this in visual designer and I'm afraid that SWT Designer can't deal with this manually altered source code anymore.

Send us a test case showing exactly what you are trying to do, and we will see if we can make it work.

[bjoernQ]

Thank you for your fast response. I'll try your suggestions.

Regarding (3):

I managed to get dynamically colored table lines by doing the following:

Code: Select all

....
   class ExtendedObservableMapLabelProvider extends ObservableMapLabelProvider implements IColorProvider{
      
      public ExtendedObservableMapLabelProvider(IObservableMap[] observableMaps){
         super(observableMaps);
      }

      
      public Color getBackground(Object element) {
         if( ((Data)(element)).getString().indexOf("2")>=0 ){
         return new Color(null,255,255,0);
         }
         
         return null;
      }


      public Color getForeground(Object element) {
         // TODO Auto-generated method stub
         return null;
      }
   }
...
   protected DataBindingContext initDataBindings() {
...
tableViewer.setLabelProvider(new ExtendedObservableMapLabelProvider(tableViewerLabelProviderMaps)); // instead of tableViewer.setLabelProvider(new ObservableMapLabelProvider(tableViewerLabelProviderMaps));
...
   }



Data is the type bound to the table. In this simple example the background color is yellow for each line where getString() returns a string containing the digit "2".

I was wondering if there's a more elegant way to do things like this with SWT Designer.

Thank you in advance.

Best regards,
Bjoern

[Eric Clayberg]

In the latest build, we now support setting custom ObservableMapLabelProviders...