I am building a preference page in Eclipse by extending the FieldEditorPreferencePage class. this page contains 2 fields : 1 BooleanFieldEditor (checkbox) and 1 FileFieldEditor. I would like to disable/enable the file field following the checkbox value. I went up to something like this (some obvious code is not displayed):
public class PreferencePage extends FieldEditorPreferencePage implements IWorkbenchPreferencePage {
public static final String PREF_KEY_1 = "checkBoxPref";
public static final String PREF_KEY_2 = "filePref";
private FileFieldEditor pathField;
private BooleanFieldEditor yesOrNoField;
private Composite pathFieldParent;
@Override
protected void createFieldEditors() {
this.yesOrNoField = new BooleanFieldEditor(PREF_KEY_1, "Check this box!", getFieldEditorParent());
this.pathFieldParent = getFieldEditorParent();
this.pathField = new FileFieldEditor(PREF_KEY_2, "Path:", this.pathFieldParent);
addField(this.yesOrNoField);
addField(this.pathField);
boolean isChecked = getPreferenceStore().getBoolean(PREF_KEY_1);
updatePathFieldEnablement(! isChecked);
}
/**
* Updates the fields according to entered values
*/
private void updatePathFieldEnablement(boolean enabled) {
this.pathField.setEnabled(enabled, this.pathFieldParent);
}
@SuppressWarnings("boxing")
@Override
public void propertyChange(PropertyChangeEvent event) {
if (event.getProperty().equals(FieldEditor.VALUE) && event.getSource() == this.yesOrNoField) {
updatePathFieldEnablement(! (boolean) event.getNewValue());
}
super.propertyChange(event);
}
}
My question is about this second parameter in FieldEditor#setEnabled. This parameter is the parent composite of the FieldEditor's controls ("Used to create the controls if required" says the javadoc) . At first, I set the value with the return of getFieldEditorParent but then I got an exception "Different parent". So I ended storing it (cf. this.pathFieldParent) and give it back to setEnabled and it works (or it seems to work). But I am not sure I am doing well, especially because I had to create a member in my class that means nothing to it (and I would have to create many of them if I had many fields to enable/disable).
Do you think I am doing well or is there a better way to provide this parent ? And could you explain to me why *setEnabled" needs it ?
Thanks.
You are using the default FLAT
layout for the preference page. When this layout is used each call to getFieldEditorParent
generates a new Composite so you have to make just one call and remember the correct parent. Using the GRID
layout getFieldEditorParent
always returns the same parent. This is the actual code:
protected Composite getFieldEditorParent() {
if (style == FLAT) {
// Create a new parent for each field editor
Composite parent = new Composite(fieldEditorParent, SWT.NULL);
parent.setLayoutData(new GridData(GridData.FILL_HORIZONTAL));
return parent;
}
// Just return the parent
return fieldEditorParent;
}
setEnabled
does sometimes create a new Label
control so it needs to know the correct parent Composite.