I'm searching for a way to add an overlay over some composites in my application. The overlay will contain an label with text "No data available". The underlying composite need to be shown but the user cannot do anything. My application contains different composite part in one screen so I need a way to only place the overlay over one of the composites. Is there a way to implement this in SWT?
A possible solution would be to put a semi-transparent Shell with no trimmings over the Composite you want to cover.
The tricky part is to update the overlay Shell to continuously match the size, position and visibility of the Composite and its parents (since they also could affect the children bounds and visibility).
So I decided to try to make a class Overlay to do that; it can be used to cover any Control and it uses control and paint listeners to track and match the underlying Control. These listeners are also attached to the whole hierarchy of parents of the Control.
You can set the color, the transparency and a text over the Overlay using the corresponding methods.
I made some simple tests and it seemed to work correctly, but I can't guarantee anything. You might want to give it a try it.
A simple example using it:
public class OverlayTest {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Display display = new Display();
Shell shell = new Shell(display);
shell.setLayout(new FillLayout(SWT.VERTICAL));
shell.setSize(250, 250);
// create the composite
Composite composite = new Composite(shell, SWT.NONE);
composite.setLayout(new FillLayout(SWT.VERTICAL));
// add stuff to the composite
for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
new Text(composite, SWT.BORDER).setText("Text " + i);
}
// create the overlay over the composite
Overlay overlay = new Overlay(composite);
overlay.setText("No data available");
// create the button to show/hide the overlay
Button button = new Button(shell, SWT.PUSH);
button.setText("Show/hide overlay");
button.addSelectionListener(new SelectionAdapter() {
@Override
public void widgetSelected(SelectionEvent arg0) {
// if the overlay is showing we hide it, otherwise we show it
if (overlay.isShowing()) {
overlay.remove();
}
else {
overlay.show();
}
}
});
shell.open();
while (shell != null && !shell.isDisposed()) {
if (!display.readAndDispatch()) {
display.sleep();
}
}
}
}
And the Overlay class:
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Objects;
import org.eclipse.swt.SWT;
import org.eclipse.swt.events.ControlEvent;
import org.eclipse.swt.events.ControlListener;
import org.eclipse.swt.events.DisposeEvent;
import org.eclipse.swt.events.DisposeListener;
import org.eclipse.swt.events.PaintEvent;
import org.eclipse.swt.events.PaintListener;
import org.eclipse.swt.graphics.Color;
import org.eclipse.swt.graphics.Point;
import org.eclipse.swt.graphics.Rectangle;
import org.eclipse.swt.layout.GridData;
import org.eclipse.swt.layout.GridLayout;
import org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Composite;
import org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Control;
import org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Label;
import org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Scrollable;
import org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Shell;
/**
* A customizable overlay over a control.
*
* @author Loris Securo
*/
public class Overlay {
private List<Composite> parents;
private Control objectToOverlay;
private Shell overlay;
private Label label;
private ControlListener controlListener;
private DisposeListener disposeListener;
private PaintListener paintListener;
private boolean showing;
private boolean hasClientArea;
private Scrollable scrollableToOverlay;
public Overlay(Control objectToOverlay) {
Objects.requireNonNull(objectToOverlay);
this.objectToOverlay = objectToOverlay;
// if the object to overlay is an instance of Scrollable (e.g. Shell) then it has
// the getClientArea method, which is preferable over Control.getSize
if (objectToOverlay instanceof Scrollable) {
hasClientArea = true;
scrollableToOverlay = (Scrollable) objectToOverlay;
}
else {
hasClientArea = false;
scrollableToOverlay = null;
}
// save the parents of the object, so we can add/remove listeners to them
parents = new ArrayList<Composite>();
Composite parent = objectToOverlay.getParent();
while (parent != null) {
parents.add(parent);
parent = parent.getParent();
}
// listener to track position and size changes in order to modify the overlay bounds as well
controlListener = new ControlListener() {
@Override
public void controlMoved(ControlEvent e) {
reposition();
}
@Override
public void controlResized(ControlEvent e) {
reposition();
}
};
// listener to track paint changes, like when the object or its parents become not visible (for example changing tab in a TabFolder)
paintListener = new PaintListener() {
@Override
public void paintControl(PaintEvent arg0) {
reposition();
}
};
// listener to remove the overlay if the object to overlay is disposed
disposeListener = new DisposeListener() {
@Override
public void widgetDisposed(DisposeEvent e) {
remove();
}
};
// create the overlay shell
overlay = new Shell(objectToOverlay.getShell(), SWT.NO_TRIM);
// default values of the overlay
overlay.setBackground(objectToOverlay.getDisplay().getSystemColor(SWT.COLOR_GRAY));
overlay.setAlpha(200);
// so the label can inherit the background of the overlay
overlay.setBackgroundMode(SWT.INHERIT_DEFAULT);
// label to display a text
// style WRAP so if it is too long the text get wrapped
label = new Label(overlay, SWT.WRAP);
// to center the label
overlay.setLayout(new GridLayout());
label.setLayoutData(new GridData(SWT.CENTER, SWT.CENTER, true, true));
showing = false;
overlay.open();
overlay.setVisible(showing);
}
public void show() {
// if it's already visible we just exit
if (showing) {
return;
}
// set the overlay position over the object
reposition();
// show the overlay
overlay.setVisible(true);
// add listeners to the object to overlay
objectToOverlay.addControlListener(controlListener);
objectToOverlay.addDisposeListener(disposeListener);
objectToOverlay.addPaintListener(paintListener);
// add listeners also to the parents because if they change then also the visibility of our object could change
for (Composite parent : parents) {
parent.addControlListener(controlListener);
parent.addPaintListener(paintListener);
}
showing = true;
}
public void remove() {
// if it's already not visible we just exit
if (!showing) {
return;
}
// remove the listeners
if (!objectToOverlay.isDisposed()) {
objectToOverlay.removeControlListener(controlListener);
objectToOverlay.removeDisposeListener(disposeListener);
objectToOverlay.removePaintListener(paintListener);
}
// remove the parents listeners
for (Composite parent : parents) {
if (!parent.isDisposed()) {
parent.removeControlListener(controlListener);
parent.removePaintListener(paintListener);
}
}
// remove the overlay shell
if (!overlay.isDisposed()) {
overlay.setVisible(false);
}
showing = false;
}
public void setBackground(Color background) {
overlay.setBackground(background);
}
public Color getBackground() {
return overlay.getBackground();
}
public void setAlpha(int alpha) {
overlay.setAlpha(alpha);
}
public int getAlpha() {
return overlay.getAlpha();
}
public boolean isShowing() {
return showing;
}
public void setText(String text) {
label.setText(text);
// to adjust the label size accordingly
overlay.layout();
}
public String getText() {
return label.getText();
}
private void reposition() {
// if the object is not visible, we hide the overlay and exit
if (!objectToOverlay.isVisible()) {
overlay.setBounds(new Rectangle(0, 0, 0, 0));
return;
}
// if the object is visible we need to find the visible region in order to correctly place the overlay
// get the display bounds of the object to overlay
Point objectToOverlayDisplayLocation = objectToOverlay.toDisplay(0, 0);
Point objectToOverlaySize;
// if it has a client area, we prefer that instead of the size
if (hasClientArea) {
Rectangle clientArea = scrollableToOverlay.getClientArea();
objectToOverlaySize = new Point(clientArea.width, clientArea.height);
}
else {
objectToOverlaySize = objectToOverlay.getSize();
}
Rectangle objectToOverlayBounds = new Rectangle(objectToOverlayDisplayLocation.x, objectToOverlayDisplayLocation.y, objectToOverlaySize.x,
objectToOverlaySize.y);
Rectangle intersection = objectToOverlayBounds;
// intersect the bounds of the object with its parents bounds so we get only the visible bounds
for (Composite parent : parents) {
Rectangle parentClientArea = parent.getClientArea();
Point parentLocation = parent.toDisplay(parentClientArea.x, parentClientArea.y);
Rectangle parentBounds = new Rectangle(parentLocation.x, parentLocation.y, parentClientArea.width, parentClientArea.height);
intersection = intersection.intersection(parentBounds);
// if intersection has no size then it would be a waste of time to continue
if (intersection.width == 0 || intersection.height == 0) {
break;
}
}
overlay.setBounds(intersection);
}
}