swt-appkit - easing development of swt-applications

• API-Documentation: JavaDoc.
• Email: fabian.zeindl@gmail.com
• Latest build: see Downloads of this repo
• Discussion: [appkit@googlegroups.com] (https://groups.google.com/group/appkit)

There's a sample application in the source which shows some of the features.

Idea

SWT-Appkit is a collection of utilities aiming to improve and help coding with SWT and building better, more comprehensive, modern applications. It's a library, not a framework in the sense, that it tries not to force you to change your application-structure. Instead you can gradually adapt your code to use parts and features, which you might find useful.

A lot of the API was designed with the special circumstances of SWT-GUI-applications in mind. Almost all SWT-related calls have to be done in the Display-Thread, which enables you to use static methods more freely.
The library makes heavy use of the Google Guava-toolkit, which enables you to write more modern and fun Java-code. A lot of the code is safe-guarded by using Guava's Preconditions which makes the code fail-fast on illegal arguments etc.

I'm also a big fan over convention over configuration and i think it's ok to give up type-safety and do some dynamic casting from time to time.

Dependencies

It should work with older versions of libraries as well.

• gson-2.0 fast json parsing library
• [guava-10.0.1] (http://guava-libraries.googlecode.com/) google's core java-libraries
• [jna-3.4] (https://github.com/twall/jna) java native access, only necessary to get correct ApplicationData Folder on Windows
• slf4j-api-1.6.4 simple logging facade for java, provides pluggable logging *static binding, no need for configuration)
• swt-3.7.1 SWT

License

Code is released under the LGPL.
CocoaUIEnhancer.java is an exception, it's released under the EPL.

Thank you / Donations

If you want you can flattr me.

RFC / Advise

• Tell me if i overlooked something concerning licensing
• does it make sense to select a Component before initialisation?
• MigLayout instead of GridLayout?
• Where does a BuilderSyntax make sense? e.g. options.get("bold").withDefault(false);

Features / Overview

Templating

• Load interface descriptions from json
• Work with interface-components by selecting elements via a query syntax

EventHandling

• Simple wrappers to write less cluttered event-handling code using Guava's EventBus

Utilities

• Registries for handling Colors, Fonts and Images
• Store and load user-preferences
• Throttle Runnables
• Display overlays on Composites
• Do measurements of your code run-time …

Various widget utilities

• Automatically resize table columns
• save / restore column-order and weights
• save / restore Shell position, maximised state etc.
• ScrollListener for Table …

Various useful widgets

• better MessageBox
• SearchFrom
• better SaveFileDialog

Sample Code

package org.appkit.sample;

// imports

public final class Sample {

//~ Static fields/initializers -------------------------------------------------------------------------
private static final Logger L = LoggerFactory.getLogger(Sample.class);

//~ Instance fields ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

private Shell shell;
private Component orders;
private SmartExecutor executor;

//~ Constructors ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

public Sample() {
	/* Log4J Configuration */
	PropertyConfigurator.configure(log4jProperties());

	/* create a shell */
	shell					  = new Shell();
	shell.setLayout(new FillLayout());

	/* create templating and load a template */
	Templating templating = Templating.fromResources();

	/* register the SearchUI component */
	templating.registerType(SearchUI.class, "search");

	/* for catching all local events (see the methods tagged with @Subscribe) */
	LocalEventContext eventContext = new LocalEventContext(this);

	/* create the orderview component with the given eventContext */
	orders = templating.create("orderview");
	orders.initialize(eventContext, shell);

	/* translate component */
	Texts.forComponent("orderview", Locale.ENGLISH).translateComponent(orders);

	/* output naming for debugging purposes */
	L.debug(orders.getNaming().toString());

	/* selects the table */
	Table t = orders.selectUI("orders.$table", TableUI.class).getTable();
	t.setHeaderVisible(true);

	/* create columns */
	for (int i = 0; i <= 6; i++) {
		TableColumn c1 = new TableColumn(t, SWT.NONE);
		c1.setText("col " + i);
	}

	PrefStore prefStore = PrefStore.createJavaPrefStore("org/appkit/sample");
	executor = SmartExecutor.create();

	/* divide table equally among columns */
	TableUtils.fillTableWidth(t);

	/* restore and save columnweights and order */
	TableUtils.rememberColumnWeights(prefStore, executor, t, "sample");
	TableUtils.rememberColumnOrder(prefStore, executor, t, "sample");

	/* resize columns proportionally if table is resized */
	TableUtils.autosizeColumns(t);

	shell.open();

	while (! shell.isDisposed()) {
		if (! shell.getDisplay().readAndDispatch()) {
			shell.getDisplay().sleep();
		}
	}

	executor.shutdown();
}

//~ Methods -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

public static void main(final String args[]) {
	new Sample();
}

@Subscribe
public void localEvent(final Object object) {
	L.debug("event: " + object);

	/* display a spinner THIS BLOCKS */
	Table t			 = orders.selectUI("orders.$table", TableUI.class).getTable();
	final Overlay ov = new Overlay(t, new SpinnerOverlay(this.executor));
	ov.show();
}

@Subscribe
public void daterangeChange(final DateRange daterange) {
	L.debug("we got a date-range: " + daterange);
}

public static Properties log4jProperties() {

	Properties props = new Properties();

	props.setProperty("log4j.rootLogger", "DEBUG,console");
	props.setProperty("log4j.appender.console", "org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender");
	props.setProperty("log4j.appender.console.Threshold", "DEBUG");
	props.setProperty("log4j.appender.console.layout", "org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout");
	props.setProperty("log4j.appender.console.layout.ConversionPattern", "%d [%t] %-5p %c - %m%n");

	return props;
}
}

TODOs / Ideas

General

• Help for adding (Win)Sparkle-Integration
• Unit tests
• Help for creating browser-based widgets (links and images are a problem)
• Help to intergrate swing-widgets

Overlay

• Paint directly on widget without the need of a shell
• Ability to lock composite

Application

• provide a wrapper to run background tasks and handle threading (weak references?)
• Executor that executes Runnable's in the display thread on a best effort approach by collection event-statistics

Templating

• Different formats (YAML ?)
• MigLayout?
• LayoutUI that positions widget absolute
• Editing Help: fast reloading of templates
• Editing Help: activate all composite borders
• Editing Help: gridlayout configuration
• Editing Help: write back json to format it properly

Measurement / Statistic

• output summary (longest running calls etc.)
• wrapper that measures the length of swt-EventHandlers

Widgets

• Table that shows results fast
• MBox: work on it so it's Mac-like on the mac
• typical "+","-" buttons for the mac
• debugviewer
• LicenseViewer for linked opensource-libraries
• ProgressBar with soft animation