Monthly Archive for April, 2010

For a long time I have tried to install Visual Editor into my Eclipse Galileo and never get it work until recently.

The secret is explained in the Wiki:

With “Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers”, you should NOT check the Java EMF Model Utilities (org.eclipse.jem.util) plugins since there are already installed.

Ugh… I think I have tried it before but why only now it is working? Anyway, I’m glad that I have it.

For those who are not aware, Visual Editor is an GUI editor for Eclipse. It can be used to assist Swing or SWT application creation. I never like Netbeans Matisse or SWT Designer because I can’t modify the code like I want. I know that Visual Editor is pretty slow, but to get a code that I can enhance manually tastes better than the alternative.

And more importantly, I like the way it codes my Swing application. Here’s an example:

import java.awt.BorderLayout;

import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JLabel;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.JSlider;
import javax.swing.JTextField;
import javax.swing.SwingConstants;

public class TTT extends JFrame {

   private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
   private JPanel jContentPane = null;
   private JLabel jLabel = null;
   private JButton jButton = null;
   private JTextField jTextField = null;
   private JSlider jSlider = null;

   /**
    * This is the default constructor
    */
   public TTT() {
      super();
      initialize();
   }

   /**
    * This method initializes this
    *
    * @return void
    */
   private void initialize() {
      this.setSize(300, 196);
      this.setContentPane(getJContentPane());
      this.setTitle("JFrame");
   }

   /**
    * This method initializes jContentPane
    *
    * @return javax.swing.JPanel
    */
   private JPanel getJContentPane() {
      if (jContentPane == null) {
         jLabel = new JLabel();
         jLabel.setText("JLabel");
         jContentPane = new JPanel();
         jContentPane.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
         jContentPane.add(jLabel, BorderLayout.CENTER);
         jContentPane.add(getJButton(), BorderLayout.EAST);
         jContentPane.add(getJTextField(), BorderLayout.SOUTH);
         jContentPane.add(getJSlider(), BorderLayout.NORTH);
      }
      return jContentPane;
   }

   /**
    * This method initializes jButton
    *
    * @return javax.swing.JButton
    */
   private JButton getJButton() {
      if (jButton == null) {
         jButton = new JButton();
         jButton.setHorizontalAlignment(SwingConstants.TRAILING);
         jButton.setText("Test");
         jButton.addActionListener(new java.awt.event.ActionListener() {
            public void actionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent e) {
               System.out.println("actionPerformed()"); // TODO Auto-generated Event stub actionPerformed()
            }
         });
      }
      return jButton;
   }

   /**
    * This method initializes jTextField
    *
    * @return javax.swing.JTextField
    */
   private JTextField getJTextField() {
      if (jTextField == null) {
         jTextField = new JTextField();
         jTextField.addKeyListener(new java.awt.event.KeyAdapter() {
            @Override public void keyTyped(java.awt.event.KeyEvent e) {
               System.out.println("keyTyped()"); // TODO Auto-generated Event stub keyTyped()
            }
         });
      }
      return jTextField;
   }

   /**
    * This method initializes jSlider
    *
    * @return javax.swing.JSlider
    */
   private JSlider getJSlider() {
      if (jSlider == null) {
         jSlider = new JSlider();
      }
      return jSlider;
   }

} // @jve:decl-index=0:visual-constraint="10,10"

See how it creates a getter for every components? The getter should prepare a component with its properties and also its listener initialization. It makes every method pretty small and readable. There is no long methods with several components and listeners initialization.