Accessing to a custom widget by using WidgetManager

[AhmetTanakol]

Hello,

I am trying to access a custom widget by calling getWidget(factoryId) method of WidgetManager, however I don't see my widget id in factories. Is using widget manager correct way to access widgets?

[akosyakov]

Have you checked that a factory is registered and widgets are always created via WidgetManager.getOrCreate?

[AhmetTanakol]

I am calling app.shell.addWidget by giving an instance of my custom widget as the parameter. Do I need to use WidgetManager?

[akosyakov]

Calling app.shell.addWidget is fine. How do you create an instance of a widget? It is the responsibility of WidgetManager. If you create it not via getOrCreate then WidgetManager does not know about this widget.

[AhmetTanakol]

I see, then I should change the way I create the widget. But how can I pass some arguments that I can use them to set some fields in my widget's constructor.getOrCreate takes only 2 parameters

[AhmetTanakol]

I assume I need to write setters in my widget class in order to set those fields

[akosyakov]

The second arg is to pass custom options.

[AhmetTanakol]

I am trying to pass a URI object in widget options however I get the following error

widget-manager.ts:155 Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: Converting circular structure to JSON

[akosyakov]

It should be JSON object. These options are stored as a part of the layout information and used to recover the widget on reload. A URI can be converted to the string and then converted back to a URI in the factory.

[AhmetTanakol]

Thank you, I managed to create what I need by extending WidgetOpenHandler

[akosyakov]

Right, it is the good base class if you want to provide a widget per a URI, like editors, previews and so on. Other notable abstractions:

• NavigatableWidget & NavigatableWidgetOpenHandler should be implemented if your widget is based on some resource, then it will be auto-revealed in the navigator, renamed properly on file moves and so on
• SaveableWidget should be implemented if your widget should support safe-lifecycle
• AbstractViewContribution - if you need a widget which should be a singleton per an application (view), e.g. navigator view, problems view and so on.

We should add code examples to our docs. For now, you are better to study files where these concepts are declared and their usages.