Building Reusable Java Widgets

This class does not generate events, but it must handle them. It is listening for switch pane events. When it receives a collapse event it must collapse, and restore itself upon reception of the restore event. We have seen how to listen for events and trap them (take a look at the collapse and restore methods in Listing 7). Now, let's look at what to do when we receive the event. In particular, how do you go about collapsing a component? Every component in the AWT can have its visibility set true or false. But simply setting its visibility is not enough; you must also re-compute the layout and redisplay the parent component. Here is how I did it:

private void redraw() {
        Component x = _containedComponent ;
         while( x.getParent() != null )
                {
                x = x.getParent() ;
                }
        x.validate() ;
        x.repaint() ;
}

This method simply searches up the component tree until it finds the top window (your applet most likely, but it could be a free-floating window or an application frame). Once the topmost window is found, I ask it to validate. This will cause the layout to be re-computed (items that are not visible will not be included) and re-displayed. An example of the collapsing pane widget is shown in Figure 8. This example uses the e-mail entry widget as the component that is collapsed.

Figure 8. CollapsingPane Widget Used in an Applet

Modify the class to accept any arbitrary window bar. You can do this by adding a method to set the window bar or create a new constructor. Remember that in order for the class to the work, the window bar you install must be a subclass of WindowBar. Also, you might think of a way to remove that restriction using interfaces.

We have discussed techniques for designing Java Widgets that are reusable. The resulting widgets are powerful and pluggable enough to warrant the extra effort involved. This article is a starting point, and I encourage you to explore and experiment with new and innovative ideas for your own widgets. I have chosen to focus on the capabilities and design goals. I strongly recommend that you extend these widgets to give them visual “punch”.

You can download all of the examples from this article from Linux Journal's FTP site (see Resources) or from the Harris web site at http://www.hisd.harris.com/Capabilities/java/. At the Harris web site you will be able to see the applets in action and explore some more advanced iterations of similar widgets.