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20050530 Monday May 30, 2005

Easy Extension of a Node's Functionality in NetBeans IDE 4.1

I've found that it's really easy to extend a node's functionality. Starting with the System Properties sample (which is a module that I created and installed in the IDE's Runtime window as outlined here), it takes three easy steps to add a new menu to the parent node. Let's say, for example, that I want to create a new menu item called "My Own Action", as shown below:

To get the above menu item, I just need to do three things:

  1. Create MyOwnAction.java and subclass CallableSystemAction. Here you see an illustration that includes the new MyOwnAction.java:

  2. In AllPropsNode.java, modify getActions() to add an instance of MyOwnAction.class: 

    public SystemAction[] getActions(boolean context) {
  return new SystemAction[] {
      SystemAction.get(MyOwnAction.class),
      null,
      SystemAction.get(RefreshPropsAction.class),
      null,
      SystemAction.get(OpenLocalExplorerAction.class),
      null,
      SystemAction.get(NewAction.class),
      null,
      SystemAction.get(ToolsAction.class),
      SystemAction.get(PropertiesAction.class),
  };
}

  3. If MyOwnAction.java refers to Bundle.properties, add a localizing tag to Bundle.properties: 

    LBL_MyOwnAction=My Own Action

    For example, getName() in MyOwnAction.java is probably as follows: 

    public String getName() {
  return NbBundle.getBundle(RefreshPropsAction.class).getString("LBL_MyOwnAction");
}

That's it. Now you can rebuild and reload the module. You've extended the node's functionality by adding a new menu item. It's a lot less painful than I would have thought.

May 30 2005, 05:00:16 AM PDT Permalink