Eclipse Adapters - A Hands-On, Hand-Holding Explanation

Presentation provider example

Adapting apples to oranges is a silly example of course, but I could extend the example to something more relevant. In Listing 3 I showed the adaptation of an apple object to a ILabelProvider, an interface used by JFace widgets for presentation. The factory for this effort is shown in Listing 7. The registration is shown in Listing 8 and sketch of the providers is shown in Listing 9.

If you look at the provider classes generated by the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF), you will see the concept of this example taken its logical conclusion.

package com.jeffricker.fruit.provider;
import org.eclipse.core.runtime.IAdapterFactory;
import org.eclipse.jface.viewers.IContentProvider;
import org.eclipse.jface.viewers.ILabelProvider;
import com.jeffricker.fruit.apples.IApple;
import com.jeffricker.fruit.oranges.IOrange;
public class FruitProviderAdapterFactory implements IAdapterFactory {
private AppleProvider appleProvider;
private OrangeProvider orangeProvider;
/** The supported types that we can adapt to */
private static final Class[] TYPES = {
FruitProvider.class, ILabelProvider.class, IContentProvider.class };
public Object getAdapter(Object adaptableObject, Class adapterType) {
if ((adapterType == FruitProvider.class)||
(adapterType == ILabelProvider.class)||
(adapterType == IContentProvider.class)){
if (adaptableObject instanceof IApple)
return getAppleProvider();
if (adaptableObject instanceof IOrange)
return getOrangeProvider();
}
return null;
}
public Class[] getAdapterList() {
return TYPES;
}
protected AppleProvider getAppleProvider(){
if (appleProvider == null)
appleProvider = new AppleProvider();
return appleProvider;
}
protected OrangeProvider getOrangeProvider(){
if (orangeProvider == null)
orangeProvider = new OrangeProvider();
return orangeProvider;
}
}

Listing 7: The fruit provider factory for displaying fruit in a JFace widget

<extension
point="org.eclipse.core.runtime.adapters">
<factory
adaptableType="com.jeffricker.fruit.IFruit"
class="com.jeffricker.fruit.provider.FruitProviderAdapterFactory">
<adapter
type="com.jeffricker.fruit.provider.FruitProvider">
</adapter>
<adapter
type="org.eclipse.jface.viewers.IContentProvider">
</adapter>
<adapter
type="org.eclipse.jface.viewers.ILabelProvider">
</adapter>
</factory>
</extension>

Listing 8: Registering the fruit provider adapter factory

package com.jeffricker.fruit.provider;
import org.eclipse.jface.viewers.IContentProvider;
import org.eclipse.jface.viewers.ILabelProvider;
public abstract class FruitProvider implements
ILabelProvider, IContentProvider {
...
}
/**
* Provides the display of IApple objects
*/
public class AppleProvider extends FruitProvider{
public String getText(Object element){
...
}
public Image getIcon(Object element){
...
}
}
/**
* Provides the display of IOrange objects
*/
public class OrangeProvider extends FruitProvider {
...
}

Listing 9: The provider classes