Eclipse Plugin Development : Eclipse Capabilities

Presently I am working on eclipse plugin development and I have come across interesting feature available in Eclipse IDE, that is Capabilities.

Internally Eclipse capabilities feature is known as Activities. Activities are designed to solve scaling problem when large no of plug-ins are used together.

Eclipse Activities address following functionalities

• Grouping of functionalities
• Enabling/Disabling group of functionalities (Categories) or individual (Activity).
• Filter Mechanisms for managing large set of UI features
• User Roll based features managements

Category: A category is simply a container for one or more activities. It allows to group set of related activities together.

Activity: Activity represent functionality (may represent group of functionalities).  An activity-pattern binding associates an activity with a regular expression that is used to match identifiers. When an activity is enabled, all functionality that matches the identifier patterns associated with that activity will be visible.

For example: By default eclipse define few categories as well as activities, which are available under Window>>Preferences>> General>>Capabilities option

 

 

Plugin developer can also introduce capabilities for their plugins by extending “org.eclipse.ui.activities”.

Lets create plugins, contributes to menu bar and toolbar and introduce capability for each of plugins to explain how it can be done.

Create plugin project and introduced menu item and toolbar item. Here is the plugin.xml for both projects

plugin.xml for com.ydtech.plugin1

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<?eclipse version="3.4"?>

<plugin>

   <extension

         point="org.eclipse.ui.commands">

      <command

            categoryId="com.ydtech.plugin1.category1"

            defaultHandler="com.ydtech.plugin1.Handler1"

            description="Command 1"

            id="com.ydtech.plugin1.command1"

            name="Command 1">

      </command>

      <category

            description="Plugin 1"

            id="com.ydtech.plugin1.category1"

            name="plugin1">

      </category>

   </extension>

   <extension

         point="org.eclipse.ui.menus">

      <menuContribution

            allPopups="false"

            locationURI="menu:org.eclipse.ui.main.menu?after=additions">

         <menu

               id="com.ydtech.plgin1.menu.plugin1"

               label="Plugin 1"

               tooltip="Plugin 1">

            <command

                  commandId="com.ydtech.plugin1.command1"

                  icon="icons/sample.gif"

                  id="com.ydtech.plugin1.menu.plugin1.command1"

                  style="push">

            </command>

         </menu>

      </menuContribution>

      <menuContribution

            allPopups="false"

            locationURI="toolbar:org.eclipse.ui.main.toolbar?after=additions">

         <toolbar

               id="com.ydtech.plugin1.toolbar.plugin1">

            <command

                  commandId="com.ydtech.plugin1.command1"

                  icon="icons/sample.gif"

                  label="Command 1"

                  style="push">

            </command>

         </toolbar>

      </menuContribution>

   </extension>

   <extension

         point="org.eclipse.ui.bindings">

      <key

            commandId="com.ydtech.plugin1.command1"

            contextId="org.eclipse.ui.contexts.window"

            schemeId="com.ydtech.plugin1.key1"

            sequence="Ctrl+Shift+1">

      </key>

   </extension>

   <extension

         point="org.eclipse.ui.activities">

      <category

            description="PLugin 1 Contribution"

            id="com.ydtech.plugin1.activities.category1"

            name="Plugin 1">

      </category>

      <activity

            id="com.ydtech.plugin1.activity1"

            name="Plugin1 Devlopment">

      </activity>

      <activityPatternBinding

            activityId="com.ydtech.plugin1.activity1"

            isEqualityPattern="true"

            pattern="com.ydtech.plugin1.*">

      </activityPatternBinding>

      <categoryActivityBinding

            activityId="com.ydtech.plugin1.activity1"

            categoryId="com.ydtech.plugin1.activities.category1">

      </categoryActivityBinding>

   </extension>

</plugin>

Here I have extended org.eclipse.ui.activities extension-point to define Category & Activity corresponding to com.ydtech.plugin1 contributions.

Here I have given simple implementation for Command Handler

package com.ydtech.plugin1;

import org.eclipse.core.commands.ExecutionEvent;

import org.eclipse.core.commands.ExecutionException;

import org.eclipse.core.commands.IHandler;

import org.eclipse.core.commands.IHandlerListener;

import org.eclipse.jface.dialogs.MessageDialog;

import org.eclipse.ui.handlers.HandlerUtil;

public class Handler1 implements IHandler {

    @Override

    public void addHandlerListener(IHandlerListener handlerListener) {

    }

    @Override

    public void dispose() {

    }

    @Override

    public Object execute(ExecutionEvent event) throws ExecutionException {

        // TODO Auto-generated method stub

        MessageDialog.openInformation(HandlerUtil.getActiveShell(event), "Infomration", "Command 1 is Selected.");

        return null;

    }

    @Override

    public boolean isEnabled() {

        return true;

    }

    @Override

    public boolean isHandled() {

        return true;

    }

    @Override

    public void removeHandlerListener(IHandlerListener handlerListener) {

    }

}

plugin.xml for com.ydtech.plugin2

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<?eclipse version="3.4"?>

<plugin>

   <extension

         point="org.eclipse.ui.actionSets">

      <actionSet

            description="Action Set 1"

            id="com.ydtech.plugin2.actionSet1"

            label="Plugin 2 ActionSet"

            visible="true">

         <menu

               id="com.ydtech.plugin2.menu.menu1"

               label="Plugin 2"

               path="menu:org.eclipse.ui.main.menu">

            <separator

                  name="additions">

            </separator>

            <groupMarker

                  name="content">

            </groupMarker>

         </menu>

         <action

               class="com.ydtech.plugin2.Action1"

               id="com.ydtech.plugin2.action1"

               label="Action 1"

               menubarPath="com.ydtech.plugin2.menu.menu1/content"

               style="push"

               toolbarPath="Normal/additions">

         </action>

      </actionSet>

   </extension>

   <extension

         point="org.eclipse.ui.activities">

      <category

            id="com.ydtech.plugin2.activities.category2"

            name="Plugin 2 Contribution">

      </category>

      <activity

            id="com.ydtech.plugin2.activity1"

            name="Plugin 2 Development">

      </activity>

      <activityPatternBinding

            activityId="com.ydtech.plugin2.activity1"

            isEqualityPattern="true"

            pattern="com.ydtech.plugin2.*">

      </activityPatternBinding>

      <categoryActivityBinding

            activityId="com.ydtech.plugin2.activity1"

            categoryId="com.ydtech.plugin2.activities.category2">

      </categoryActivityBinding>

   </extension>

</plugin>

Similar to previous plugin.xml, Category and Activity has been defined for com.ydtech.plugin2 plugin.

Here is the simple implementation for ActionDelegates

package com.ydtech.plugin2;

import org.eclipse.jface.action.IAction;

import org.eclipse.jface.dialogs.MessageDialog;

import org.eclipse.jface.viewers.ISelection;

import org.eclipse.ui.IWorkbenchWindow;

import org.eclipse.ui.IWorkbenchWindowActionDelegate;

public class Action1 implements IWorkbenchWindowActionDelegate {

    private IWorkbenchWindow window ;

    @Override

    public void run(IAction action) {

        MessageDialog.openInformation(window.getShell(), "Infomration", "Action 1 is Selected.");

    }

    @Override

    public void selectionChanged(IAction action, ISelection selection) {

    }

    @Override

    public void dispose() {

    }

    @Override

    public void init(IWorkbenchWindow window) {

        this.window = window;

    }

}

 

Now run the application , you will notice UI menus items contributed by both the plugins as well as capabilities options.

 

 

Following figure shows mapping between Category and Activity

 

Try Plugin1 & Plugin 2 capabilities unselected , al contributions from these plugins will be disappeared from UI