Computer Science Semester Project

SWT Tutorial

Patrick Salamin

supervised by

Paul-Louis Meylan
Prof. Claude Petitpierre
at the

Laboratoire de téléinformatique, EPFL

April 18, 2005
Semester project, 2004 2 SWT Tutorial
Contents

1 Why SWT? 9

2 Building blocks of an SWT application 11

3 Environment set-up 13

4 Your first SWT application 15

5 Running SWT applications outside of Eclipse 19

6 SWT packages 21

7 Dialogs 23
7.1 MessageBox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
7.2 ColorDialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
7.3 DirectoryDialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
7.4 FontDialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
7.5 FileDialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
7.6 PrintDialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

8 Widgets 39
8.1 Widget Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
8.1.1 How to use the listeners (SelectionListener) . . . . . . 41
8.1.2 KeyListener . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
8.1.3 MouseListener . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
MouseListener . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
MouseMoveListener . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
MouseTrackListener . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
8.1.4 TextListener . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
ModifyListener . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
VerifyListener . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
8.1.5 FocusListeners and TraverseListener . . . . . . . . . . 47

3
 CONTENTS

FocusListener . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
TraverseListener . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
8.2 Useful widgets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
8.2.1 Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
8.2.2 Slider, Scale and ProgressBar widgets . . . . . . . . . . 51
Slider and Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
ProgressBar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
8.2.3 Text widget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
8.2.4 List widget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
8.3 Composite widgets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
8.3.1 Table widget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
TableColumn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
TableItem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
8.3.2 Combo widget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
8.3.3 Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
8.3.4 TabFolder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
8.3.5 CoolBar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
8.4 Menu Widgets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
8.4.1 Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Simple Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Advanced Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
8.4.2 Pop-Up Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
8.5 A summary of controls having items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

9 Layouts 87
9.1 FillLayout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
9.2 RowLayout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
9.3 GridLayout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
9.4 FormLayout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
9.5 StackLayout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

A SWT editors 101

B An interesting custom widget example 103

Semester project, 2004 4 SWT Tutorial

List of Figures

2.1 An SWT application from different perspectives . . . . . . . . 11

3.1 Possible error at the run-time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

4.1 The simplest SWT application source code . . . . . . . . . . . 16

4.2 Simplest SWT application resulting from the preceding code . 17

5.1 Eclipse logo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

7.1 Dialog class hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

7.2 Simple MessageBox code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
7.3 Most important style bit constants for the Dialogs for the icons 25
7.4 MessageBox code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
7.5 MessageBox resulting from the previous code . . . . . . . . . . 27
7.6 ColorDialog code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
7.7 ColorDialog resulting from the previous code . . . . . . . . . . 29
7.8 DirectoryDialog code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
7.9 DirectoryDialog resulting from the previous code . . . . . . . . 31
7.10 FontDialog code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
7.11 FontDialog resulting from the previous code . . . . . . . . . . 33
7.12 FileDialog code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
7.13 FileDialog resulting from the previous code . . . . . . . . . . . 35
7.14 PrintDialog code sample (1/2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
7.15 PrintDialog code sample (2/2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
7.16 PrintDialog resulting from the preceding code . . . . . . . . . 38

8.1 Widget class hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

8.2 Event widgets summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
8.3 SelectionListener sample code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
8.4 SelectionAdapter sample code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
8.5 ButtonListener sample code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
8.6 ButtonAdapter sample code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

5
 LIST OF FIGURES

8.7 KeyListener code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

8.8 MouseListener code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
8.9 VerifyListener code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
8.10 TraverseListener code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
8.11 Control class hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
8.12 Button code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
8.13 Button resulting from the previous code . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
8.14 Useful button style bit constants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
8.15 Scale and Slider code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
8.16 Scale and Slider resulting from the previous code . . . . . . . 53
8.17 ProgressBar code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
8.18 ProgressBar resulting from the previous code . . . . . . . . . . 54
8.19 Text sample code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
8.20 Text resulting from the previous code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
8.21 List sample code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
8.22 List resulting from the previous code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
8.23 Composite can contain other composite classes . . . . . . . . . 58
8.24 Composite code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
8.25 Composite resulting from the previous code . . . . . . . . . . 60
8.26 Table code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
8.27 TableColumn code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
8.28 TableItem code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
8.29 Table source code example 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
8.30 Table source code example 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
8.31 Table source code example 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
8.32 Table resulting from the previous codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
8.33 Simplest Combo code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
8.34 Combo code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
8.35 Combo resulting from the previous code . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
8.36 Tree code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
8.37 TreeItem source code example 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
8.38 TreeItem source code example 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
8.39 TreeImage code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
8.40 TreeSelectionListener code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
8.41 TreeListener code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
8.42 Tree resulting from the previous codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
8.43 TabFolder sample code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
8.44 TabFolder resulting from the previous code . . . . . . . . . . . 72
8.45 CoolBar code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
8.46 CoolBar Button source code example 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
8.47 CoolBar SelectionListener code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Semester project, 2004 6 SWT Tutorial

LIST OF FIGURES

8.48 CoolBar Button source code example 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

8.49 ToolBar code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
8.50 CoolBar Point code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
8.51 CoolBar setWrapIndices method code sample . . . . . . . . . 74
8.52 CoolBar resulting from the previous codes . . . . . . . . . . . 75
8.53 Menu (simple) code source example 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
8.54 MenuItem (simple) source code example 1 . . . . . . . . . . . 76
8.55 Menu (simple) source code example 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
8.56 MenuItem (simple) source code example 2 . . . . . . . . . . . 77
8.57 Menu (simple) Listener code source example 1 . . . . . . . . . 77
8.58 Menu (simple) resulting from the previous codes . . . . . . . . 78
8.59 MenuItem (advanced) source code example 3 . . . . . . . . . . 78
8.60 Menu (advanced) Listener code source example 2 . . . . . . . 79
8.61 MenuItem (advanced) code source example 4 . . . . . . . . . . 79
8.62 MenuItem (advanced) code source example 5 . . . . . . . . . . 79
8.63 MenuItem (advanced) code source example 6 . . . . . . . . . . 80
8.64 Menu (advanced) Listener code source example 3 . . . . . . . 80
8.65 Menu (advanced) sub-action code source example 1 . . . . . . 81
8.66 Menu (advanced) sub-action code source example 2 . . . . . . 81
8.67 Menu (advanced) sub-action code source example 3 . . . . . . 81
8.68 Menu (advanced) sub-action code source example 4 . . . . . . 82
8.69 Menu (advanced) resulting from the previous codes . . . . . . 82
8.70 PopUp menu source code example 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
8.71 PopUp menu source code example 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
8.72 PopUp menu Composite code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
8.73 PopUp menu setMenu() . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
8.74 PopUp menu resulting from the previous codes . . . . . . . . . 84
8.75 Widget needing Item summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

9.1 SWT Layout manager hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

9.2 FillLayout code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
9.3 FillLayout resulting from window resizing . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
9.4 RowLayout code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
9.5 RowLayout wrapping sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
9.6 RowLayout margins and spacing sample . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
9.7 RowLayoutData code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
9.8 RowLayoutData sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
9.9 GridLayout code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
9.10 GridLayout number of columns and spacings sample . . . . . . 92
9.11 GridLayout with column of equal width sample . . . . . . . . 93
9.12 GridData code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

SWT Tutorial 7 Semester project, 2004

 LIST OF FIGURES

9.13 GridData horizontal spanning sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

9.14 GridData with the largest cell width sample . . . . . . . . . . 94
9.15 GridData with horizontal alignment sample . . . . . . . . . . 94
9.16 FormLayout code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
9.17 FormData and FormAttachement sample . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
9.18 FormData code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
9.19 FormData resulting from the previous code . . . . . . . . . . . 97
9.20 StackLayout code example 1/2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
9.21 StackLayout code example 2/2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
9.22 StackLayout resulting from the previous code . . . . . . . . . 99

B.1 custom ZoomedScrolledCanvas code sample . . . . . . . . . . 104

B.2 custom setComp() method code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
B.3 custom setupScale() method code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
B.4 custom setupZoom() method code sample . . . . . . . . . . . 105
B.5 custom setImage() method code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
B.6 custom SelectionListener code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
B.7 custom last step code sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
B.8 custom application resulting from the previous codes . . . . . 108
B.9 custom application used 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
B.10 custom application used 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

Semester project, 2004 8 SWT Tutorial

Chapter 1

Why SWT?

First of all, let us just talk about what is SWT ? It is a cross platform GUI
developed by IBM. But why did IBM create another GUI library ? Why
do not they have used the already existing Java GUI frameworks ? Let us
return a little in the past of the Java history...
At first, Sun created a cross platform GUI framework AWT (Abstract Win-
dowing Toolkit). This toolkit uses native widgets but it suffers from an LCD
problem which causes loss of major platform features. More concretely, if
a platform (P1) tolerate the widgets 1 to 40 and an other platform (P2)
tolerate the widgets 20 to 25, then the cross-platform AWT framework only
offers the intersection of these two sets.
In order to solve this problem, Sun created a new framework that uses em-
ulated widgets instead of native widgets: Swing. This approach solved the
LCD problem and provided a rich set of widgets but created other problems.
For instance, Swing applications no longer look like the native applications.
Although they are the latest improvements in the JVM, the Swing applica-
tions suffer performance problems that do not exist in their native counter-
parts. Moreover, the Swing applications consume too much memory, which
is not suitable for small devices such as PDAs and Mobile Phones.
IBM decided that no one of these approaches fulfill their requirements. So,
IBM created a new GUI library, called SWT (Standard Widget Toolkit),
which solves the problems seen with the AWT and the Swing frameworks.
The SWT framework accesses native widgets through JNI (Java Native In-
terface). If a widget is not available on the host platform, SWT emulates
it.

9
Semester project, 2004 10 SWT Tutorial
Chapter 2

Building blocks of an SWT

application

The Display, Shell, and Widgets elements are the basic building blocks in an
SWT application. The Display instance is responsible from managing event
loops and controlling communication between the UI thread and the other
threads and the Shell instance corresponds to the window in an application
managed by the OS window manager. In an SWT application one Display
and one or more Shell instances are needed at least. The Widget instances
are elements we will put on the window (we will describe them and their use
in the chapter 8).

Figure 2.1: An SWT application from different perspectives

11
 • The diagram on the left is the simplified inheritance diagram of the UI
objects

• The centered diagram is the containment structure of the UI objects

• The diagram on the right is the created UI

Each thread of an application (they can be several) uses its own instance
of a Display object. The current active instance of a Display object can be
obtained by using the static Display.getCurent() method. The Shell ob-
ject represents a window in a particular operating system. It can be normal,
maximized or minimized. There are two types of Shell s:

1. the top-level Shell created as a child, main window of the Display

2. the dialog Shell that depends on the other Shell s

Shell type depends on the style bit constant(s) passed to the Shell construc-
tor. If a Display object is given to the parameter, it is a top-level shell,
otherwise the default value of a Shell is DialogShell.
Some widget properties must be set at the creation time. These widget
properties are called style bits. They are defined as constants in the SWT
class, e.g. Button button = new Button (shell, <style bit(s)>). It is
possible to use more than one style bit by using the OR operator (|). For
instance, to use a bordered ”push button”, you need to use SWT.PUSH |
SWT.BORDER in the style bit parameters.

Semester project, 2004 12 SWT Tutorial

Chapter 3

Environment set-up

To develop an SWT application is quite different from developing a Swing

application. At first, you need to add the SWT libraries to your classpath
and set the necessary environment variables.
The first library that you need is the swt.jar file that is under the
ECLIPSE HOME\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.swt.win32 3.1.0\ws\win32
directory. Depending on the version of the Eclipse that you are currently us-
ing, you might need to use a different directory. The swt.jar file must be
added to your classpath to make this go to menu Project -> Properties ->
JavaBuildPath -> Libraries -> Add Variable -> Eclipse Home -> Extend
and select the swt.jar library under the directory above and then click OK.
Afterwards, you will be able to compile an SWT application but, because of a
runtime exception shown below, you will not be able to execute it because the
swt.jar library uses native libraries. So you need to set the java.library.path
environment variable to use native libraries in Java.

Figure 3.1: Possible error at the run-time

13
 To set the java.library.path variable, go to Run -> Run... -> Java
Application -> New -> Arguments -> VM Arguments. Thereafter, if neces-
sary, modify the path below and paste it to the VM Arguments field.
-Djava.library.path=ECLIPSE HOME\eclipse\plugins\
org.eclipse.swt.win32 3.1.0\os\win32\x86 If you need to load any na-
tive library that your application uses, you can use the method:
Runtime.getPlatform.loadLibrary(LIBRARY NAME)

After these steps you will be able to run an SWT application within your
eclipse environment.

Semester project, 2004 14 SWT Tutorial

Chapter 4

Your first SWT application

To Create a typical SWT application requires the following steps:

• Create a Display object

• Create one or more Shell objects

• Set a Layout manager of the Shell

• Create Widget(s) inside the Shell (s) (as many as you want)

• Open the Shell window

• Write an event dispatching loop

• Dispose the Display object

You can use the following code template to quickly run the code parts given
later in this tutorial.

15
 Figure 4.1: The simplest SWT application source code

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CHAPTER 4. YOUR FIRST SWT APPLICATION

This example displays an empty window in which you can add your wid-
gets to the template above. As said before, every SWT application requires
(1)a Display and one or more (2)Shell s. The Shell is a Composite object:
it can contain other Composite objects. If the (3)Layout of the Shell is not
set, added widgets to the Shell will not be visible. You can (4) set the size
and the title of your window. The Shell window must be (5)opened to be
(6)displayed. The event handling loop reads and dispatches the GUI Events.
If there is no event handling loop, the application window cannot be shown,
even if the Shell window is opened by the open() method. Afterwards, you
should dispose the (7)Display, when the Shell is discarded.
The result of this code can be seen here:

Figure 4.2: Simplest SWT application resulting from the preceding code

You can use the Source -> Organize Imports menu or Ctrl+Shift+O to au-
tomatically import the required libraries.

SWT Tutorial 17 Semester project, 2004

Semester project, 2004 18 SWT Tutorial
Chapter 5

Running SWT applications

outside of Eclipse

To run your application outside of Eclipse, the swt.jar library must be in

your classpath, and the java.library.path environment variable must be set
properly. Depending on the host platform, the appropriate native library file
must be available:

1. Put the swt.dll file in the c:\windows\system32 directory

(or for the UNIX users, put the ”so” file in the repository where you
operating system usually goes to find the native libraries).

2. Put absolute path of your swt.jar

(ECLIPSE HOME\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.swt.win32 3.1.0\ws
\win32\swt.jar)
in your CLASSPATH environment variable (try WINDOWS KEY (=
the flag) + Pause -> Advanced -> Environment Variables -> CLASS-
PATH and add the previous path)
(or for the UNIX users, set your CLASSPATH environment variable by
adding the absolute path to your file swt.jar to it.)

Then you will only have to put the following lines in your terminal to compile
and launch your application:

>javac MyClass.java
>java MyClass

19
 The SWT libraries are available under the Eclipse plug-in directory. If
you want to get the SWT libraries without downloading the whole Eclipse
package, it is possible to download a single SWT library or the eclipse envi-
ronment by clicking on the following link:

http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/index.php

Figure 5.1: Eclipse logo

Note that if it does not work with the preceding instructions, you can try
the following actions (a bit more complex):

1. Put swt.dll in the same directory as the program.

2. Put swt.dll in the JAVA HOME\bin directory.

>javac -classpath c:\swt\swt.jar MyClass.java

>java -classpath c:\swt\swt.jar;.

-Djava.library.path=c:\swt MyClass

The java.library.path is the required environment variable for the JNI.

If you do not set this environment, your DLL class will not be accessible.
In that case, the application cannot run properly and throws the run-time
exception seen before in the chapter 3.

Semester project, 2004 20 SWT Tutorial

Chapter 6

SWT packages

SWT is composed of the following main packages. The definitions of the

packages are taken from the Eclipse API documentation. You can find the
API documentation on the Eclipse Web site:
http://www.eclipse.org/documentation/html/plugins/org.eclipse.platform.
doc.isv/doc/reference/api/

org.eclipse.swt
Contains classes that define constants and exceptions used by the SWT
classes. It consists of three classes: SWT, SWTException and, SWTError. The
SWT will probably be your favorite class because it contains constants for
SWT libraries such as keyboard, error, color, layout, text style, button,...
and the style bit constants.

org.eclipse.swt.widgets
Contains most of the SWT widget components, including the support inter-
face and classes. We will speak about them from the section 8.2.

org.eclipse.swt.events
Defines listeners and (typed) events, that SWT components use. This pack-
age contains three different groups of classes: the Listener interfaces, the
Adapter and Event classes. We will speak about them in the section 8.1

org.eclipse.swt.dnd Contains classes for drag-and-drop support of the

SWT widgets.

org.eclipse.swt.layout
Contains classes providing predefined positioning and sizing of the SWT wid-
gets.

21
org.eclipse.swt.print
Contains classes providing print support for the SWT widgets.

org.eclipse.swt.graphics
Provides the classes concerning points, rectangles, regions, colors, cursors,
fonts, graphics contexts (that is, GCs) where most of the primitive drawing
operations are implemented, and images including both the code for display-
ing them and the public API for loading/saving them.

Semester project, 2004 22 SWT Tutorial

Chapter 7

Dialogs

What is and what does a dialog? A dialog is a kind of conversational win-

dow that appears when, e.g. the program needs to get informations from
the user. It usually provides predefined solutions and the user only has to
choose between them and confirm his choice. We will then have a look at
the predefined existing Dialogs of SWT but first note that the dialog im-
plementations are native. This means that the Dialogs – as the widgets –
are platform components. They are derived from the Dialog abstract class.
They are not Widgets but they can contain some of them.

Figure 7.1: Dialog class hierarchy

23
 There exist different types of dialogs: they can have specific properties
(as shown here).
Each Dialog open() method returns a different type:

Figure 7.2: Simple MessageBox code sample

• The MessageBox dialog returns an int from the open() method. There-
fore, one must write different conditions to handle the return value for
each Dialog. We will speak about them in the section 7.1.

• The ColorDialog, which shows a color selection palette, returns an RGB

object from return method. We will speak about them in the section
7.2.

• The DirectoryDialog, which enables you to select a directory, returns

a String from the open() method. The returning value is the selected
directory. It is also possible to set additional filters to filter the direc-
tories. We will speak about them in the section 7.3.

• The FontDialog, which enables a user to select a font from all avail-
able fonts in the system, returns a FontData object from the open()
method. We will speak about them in the section 7.4

• The FileDialog enables a user to select a file. Additionally, you can set
an extension filter, path filter, and filename filters. This dialog has the
following style bit constants: SWT.OPEN to show the Open button on
the dialog and SWT.SAVE to show the Save button on the dialog.

• The PrintDialog enables a user to select a printer before printing. It

returns a PrinterData object from the open() method.

Available button constants are listed below. A combination of different but-

tons can be made by using the | operator. The SWT framework builds the
dialogs depending on their style bits. E.g. the button constants are:
SWT.ABORT, SWT.OK, SWT.CANCEL, SWT.RETRY, SWT.IGNORE, SWT.YES, and
SWT.NO.

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CHAPTER 7. DIALOGS

The following table shows a list of available icons for the dialogs

Figure 7.3: Most important style bit constants for the Dialogs for the icons

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 7.1. MESSAGEBOX

7.1 MessageBox
The MessageBox is really useful to inform or warn the user or to get a basic
response from the user. It can display a message with an icon to the user
and provide buttons to allow the user to respond to the system.
To add a MessageBox that asks the user something and gives him possible
replies of ”Yes”, ”No” or ”Cancel”, you can use the following code (the last
part of this code will serve to treat the user’s answer):

Figure 7.4: MessageBox code sample

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CHAPTER 7. DIALOGS

Figure 7.5: MessageBox resulting from the previous code

As said before, the open() method of the MessageBox class will return
an int representing the response from the user.

The different icon styles were given in the figure 7.4 and the possible styles
for the types of responses are: SWT.OK, SWT.CANCEL, SWT.YES, SWT.NO,
SWT.RETRY, SWT.ABORT, SWT.IGNORE

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 7.2. COLORDIALOG

7.2 ColorDialog
The ColorDialog allows users to select a color from a predefined set of avail-
able colors in a palette. To add a color dialog to your Shell, you can use
the following code (the last part of this code will serve to treat the user’s
answer):

Figure 7.6: ColorDialog code sample

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Figure 7.7: ColorDialog resulting from the previous code

As said before, the open() method of the ColorDialog class will return
an object of type RGB representing the color the user selected. It will return
null if the dialog was cancelled, if no color was selected or if an error occurred.

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 7.3. DIRECTORYDIALOG

7.3 DirectoryDialog
The DirectoryDialog allows the user to navigate through the file system of
his computer (or network) and select a directory. To add a DirectoryDialog
to your Shell, you can use the following code (the last part of this code will
serve to treat the user’s answer):

Figure 7.8: DirectoryDialog code sample

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CHAPTER 7. DIALOGS

Figure 7.9: DirectoryDialog resulting from the previous code

As said before, the open() method of the DirectoryDialog class will return
a string describing the absolute path of the selected directory, or null if the
dialog was cancelled or if an error occurred.

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 7.4. FONTDIALOG

7.4 FontDialog
The FontDialog allows the user to select a font in all the available fonts in
his system. To add a FontDialog to your Shell, you can use the following
code (the last part of this code will serve to treat the user’s answer):

Figure 7.10: FontDialog code sample

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Figure 7.11: FontDialog resulting from the previous code

As said before, the open() method of the FontDialog class will return a
FontData object describing the font that was selected, or null if the dialog
was cancelled or an error occurred.

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 7.5. FILEDIALOG

7.5 FileDialog
The FileDialog allows a user to navigate through the file system and select or
enter a file name. To add a FileDialog to your shell you can use the following
code (the last part of this code will serve to treat the user’s answer):

Figure 7.12: FileDialog code sample

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CHAPTER 7. DIALOGS

Figure 7.13: FileDialog resulting from the previous code

As said before, the open() method of the FileDialog class will return a
String describing the absolute path of the first selected file, or null if the
dialog was cancelled or an error occurred.

The possible styles of the FileDialog are SWT.OPEN, SWT.SAVE and SWT.MULTI

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 7.6. PRINTDIALOG

7.6 PrintDialog
The PrintDialog allows the user to select a printer and various print-related
parameters prior to starting a print job. To add a PrintDialog to your Shell
you can use the following code (the last part of this code will ser to treat the
user’s answer):

Figure 7.14: PrintDialog code sample (1/2)

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Figure 7.15: PrintDialog code sample (2/2)

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 7.6. PRINTDIALOG

Figure 7.16: PrintDialog resulting from the preceding code

As said before, the open() method of the PrintDialog class will return a
PrinterData object containing all the information the user selected from the
dialog. If the dialog was cancelled or an error occurred, the open() method
will return null.
Note that the PrintDialog class contains the following methods: getEndPage(),
getPrintToFile(), getScope() and getStartPage() which return their
respective fields the user selected before pressing OK or Cancel in the dialog.
It is not recommended to use these methods to determine information for a
print job as they return values even if the user cancelled the dialog.

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Chapter 8

Widgets

What is and what does a widget? It is a combination of a graphic symbol

and some program code to perform a specific function. E.g. a scroll-bar
or button. Windowing systems usually provide widget libraries containing
commonly used widgets drawn in a certain style and with consistent behav-
iour. We will see the most used of them but first, let us have a look at the
hierarchy of the widgets to have a global idea of what we will explore: The
Menu objects also require a window to be displayed, but this requirement is
indirectly satisfied. A Menu object requires a Control object.

Figure 8.1: Widget class hierarchy

Note that the Widget, Item, ScrollBar and Control classes are abstract
classes.

39
 8.1. WIDGET EVENTS

8.1 Widget Events

The Events and Listener are the widgets we use to manage with the user
actions. They are not graphically visible, but without them we cannot verify
the changes made by the user on the interface. You can find an Event widgets
summary in the next table that, in order to simplify, only contains the event
names. You should figure out the name of an event class by using this
<Event Name>Event. In the same idea, the name of the associated listener
can be figured out by using <Event Name>Listener. But pay attention, each
event does not have a matching adapter class. This is why the events having
adapters are marked in bold (the name of an adapter can be figured out by
using <EventName>Adapter).
For example: the event name is Control, event class is ControlEvent, listener
class is ControlListener, adaptor class is ControlAdaptor.

Figure 8.2: Event widgets summary

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CHAPTER 8. WIDGETS

8.1.1 How to use the listeners (SelectionListener)

When you want to capture the events in SWT, you need to add listeners
to your controls. Then when the event corresponding to the listened widget
occurs, the listener code will be executed.
To make this possible, you need to do two things:

1. First, you will have to create a listener which is specific to the event
that you wish to capture. There is an interface for each listener that
you can use: SelectionListener and a class that will provide you with
the event informations: SelectionEvent. Within the listener that you
created, you will have to implement the methods that are predefined
in the interface (which appears automatically when you create a new
object of this type if you use Eclipse).

Figure 8.3: SelectionListener sample code

When it only requires to implement one method, you can create and
use an adapter instead of a listener: SelectionAdapter. The adapter
implements the interface with empty methods so that you do not have
to write some code for methods that you do not need in your listener.
Note that in our SelectionListener, we did not add any code for the
widgetDefaultSelected() method. So we simply could have used an
adapter, and only implement the widgetSelected() method.

Figure 8.4: SelectionAdapter sample code

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 8.1. WIDGET EVENTS

2. The second thing is that you will have to add the listener to your
widget. For this, you will see that each control has methods to add
listeners: addSelectionListener(). Then you pass your listener as
argument to this method, and you are ready to capture events.

Figure 8.5: ButtonListener sample code

Or – in our case – we could have also used:

Figure 8.6: ButtonAdapter sample code

Now that we have seen how to create, add and use a listener to a widget, let
us have a look at the most often used types of listeners.

8.1.2 KeyListener
The KeyListener object has two methods: keyPressed() and keyReleased(),
whose functions are obvious. The event object is of KeyEvent type and be-
cause there are only two methods, a KeyAdapter can also be used to imple-
ment only one of these methods.
The KeyEvent is the most interesting feature to capture keyboard events.
It has a property called character that stores which character was just
pressed. You can access this character value using e.character (where e is
a KeyEvent instance). You can also access the key code and state mask of
the pressed key. The key codes are for special keys and are constants in the
SWT library, like SWT.CTRL for the control key and SWT.CR for the carriage
return key and the state mask indicates the status of the keyboard modifier
keys.
The following example shows how to use the keyPressed() and keyReleased()
methods. At first, we attach a KeyListener to a basic widget (e.g. a
Text)and a KeyEvent is generated every time you type in the text. With
the keyPressed() method, we check if the pressed key was a special key
(such as tab, carriage return, etc.), and print out the readable character for
that key. Otherwise, we print out the character as is. In the keyReleased()

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CHAPTER 8. WIDGETS

method, we check if the control key was pressed before another character was
pressed, such as Control-C. This is a method that could be used to capture
ctrl-key sequences in a widget such as a text:

Figure 8.7: KeyListener code sample

Note that if we used a KeyAdapter instead of a KeyListener, we would have

only had to implement one of keyPressed() and keyReleased() method.

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 8.1. WIDGET EVENTS

8.1.3 MouseListener
There are three kinds of MouseListener :

1. MouseListener, that tracks the mouse pression

2. MouseMoveListener, that tracks when the mouse is moved

3. MouseTrackListener, that tracks where the mouse is in relation with

the Control

We will go over all these three listeners. But since we are dealing with events,
it is not possible to show the results.

MouseListener
The MouseListener has three methods, mouseDown(), mouseUp() and the
mouseDoubleClick() (obvious functions). Once again a MouseAdapter is
available and MouseEvent is the class that contains information on the event.
The MouseEvent fields are x, y, stateMask and button. This last property
returns the number of the button that was pressed or released: a value of
1 for the first button on the shell, 2 for the the second,... The x and y
properties return the mouse coordinates at the moment of the event and the
stateMask property returns the state of the keyboard modifier keys at the
event time.
In the following example there are two MouseAdapter s:

• one that implements the mouseUp() and mouseDown() methods (this

adapter is attached to two different buttons. We can do this by first
creating the adapter, then adding it to every widgets that needs to use
it. We find the number of the button that has been pressed, and also
the coordinates of the mouse when it is both pressed and released)

• another one that implements the mouseDoubleClick() method (it opens

a new window when the double click event is detected on the Label )

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CHAPTER 8. WIDGETS

Figure 8.8: MouseListener code sample

Note that if you press on the first button, it tells you that Button 1 has
been pressed, and pressing on the second button tells you that Button 2 has
been pressed. If you press your mouse down, move it around, and then release
it, anywhere else you will see the different coordinates where your mouse was
pressed and released at.

MouseMoveListener
There is only one method for the MouseMoveListener : mouseMove(). This
method is invoked when the mouse is moved over the control onto which
the listener is attached. As usual, MouseEvent is the type of the generated

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 8.1. WIDGET EVENTS

event.

MouseTrackListener
The MouseTrackListener has three methods: mouseEnter() that is called
when the mouse enters into the area covered by the Control to which it is
attached, mouseExit() that is called when the mouse exits the area covered
by the Control to which it is attached and mouseHover that is called when
the mouse hovers over the area covered by the Control to which it is attached.

8.1.4 TextListener
There are a couple of listeners that are very useful when you use the Text
widgets: ModifyListener which is called when text is modified and VerifyLis-
tener which is called before text is modified. The last one can be used to
verify that the new entered values are valid. We will briefly go over both of
these listeners.

ModifyListener
The ModifyListener has one method, modifyText() whose produced event
is a ModifyEvent (similar to TypedEvent, and has a time and a widget fields.
It can be used when we need to be notified if the text has been changed. The
modifyText() method is called every time a character is modified (add or
erased). You can see an example of its used in the end of the VerifyListener
subsection.

VerifyListener
The only method of the VerifyListener is verifyText() and its event is of
type VerifyEvent. This event has all the properties of a TypedEvent and a
KeyEvent, as well as the fields: start that indicate the range of text which
is about to be modified, end that indicate the range of text which is about
to be modified, doit that indicates whether or not we should complete the
action that triggered the event and text that indicates the new text to which
your text is being changed.
We can use this listener to be sure that a field can be filled by some specific
characters. In the following example, we check if the user is entering an
asterisk (*)in the Text widget and if it is the case the action is cancelled.
(Notice that it does not matter how many times the ”*” key is pressed... no
asterisk will never appear in the widget.

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CHAPTER 8. WIDGETS

Figure 8.9: VerifyListener code sample

8.1.5 FocusListeners and TraverseListener

As usual, FocusListener s are in relation with the FocusEvent that are gen-
erated when a widget receives the focus, by any means. And by the same
way, TraverseListener s are in relation with TraverseEvent which are gener-
ated when a widget gains the focus by means of traversal. Let us see both of
these event handlers.

FocusListener
The FocusListener has two methods: focusGained() and focusLost() whose
functions seem to be obvious. The generated event is of type FocusEvent and
has all the properties of a TypedEvent. The example in the TraverseListener
paragraph will give you more details.

TraverseListener
The only method of the TraverseListener is keyTraversed(). It is called
when the widget to which the handler is attached is traversed by a traversal
method (e.g. ”tabs”, ”up arrow”, ”down arrows”,...).
The generated event is the TraverseEvent whose the most useful properties
are: detail that indicates what kind of traversal generated the event and
doit that is the same as for the VerifyListener (it sets a flag indicating
whether the event should continue).
All these traversals can be referred to by using the SWT.TRAVERSE XXX style

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 8.1. WIDGET EVENTS

bit constants (e.g. SWT.TRAVERSE TAB PREVIOUS).

Figure 8.10: TraverseListener code sample

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CHAPTER 8. WIDGETS

8.2 Useful widgets

Here is a hierarchy of the Control widgets you can use:

Figure 8.11: Control class hierarchy

You always need to specify at least a style bit constant for every one of them
(even SWT.NONE if you do not know which constant to use or if you do not
want to specify anyone.

8.2.1 Buttons
A Button is a widget the user can click onto in order to start an action. To
place a Button on the Shell, you can use the following code:

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 8.2. USEFUL WIDGETS

Figure 8.12: Button code sample

And here is the result of the previous code:

Figure 8.13: Button resulting from the previous code

A Button can have different styles that depend on its defined style bit con-
stant(s). A list of Button objects and their style constants is shown in table
on the following page.

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CHAPTER 8. WIDGETS

Figure 8.14: Useful button style bit constants

A basic event handler for the button is a selection event handler which
is called when the button is selected by clicking on it. To create the event
handler, we add a listener to the button using the preceding code as seen in
the section 8.1.1

8.2.2 Slider, Scale and ProgressBar widgets

The Slider,Scale and ProgressBar are all very similar Control widgets, but
they do not really use the same methods in order to function properly.

Slider and Scale

The Scale widgets represent a range of selectable continue values. This range
can be defined by the setMinimum() and setMaximum() methods. You can
get the selection value by using the getSelection() method (and by the
same way, set it with the setSelection() method). A Scale widget can

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 8.2. USEFUL WIDGETS

only have one selected value at each time.

If you use a Slider, you can also set the size of the thumb. This size is relative
to the minimum and maximum values that you have set. For example, if you
set the minimum to 0, the maximum to 100, and the thumb size to 30 – with
the setThumb() method –, you will make the thumb of about one third (100
divided 30 equals almost 1/3) of the length of the slider.
If you use a Scale, you can set the page increment that determines how
often measuring bars are placed on the scale. For example, if you set the
minimum to 0, the maximum to 500 and the page increment to 50 – with the
setPageIncrement() method –, there will be 10 (500 divided by 50 equals
10) measuring bars on the scale. It will place a bar every 50 places, relative to
the minimum and the maximum. It is so impossible to have several selections.
Here is an example of what you get with the following code:

Figure 8.15: Scale and Slider code sample

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CHAPTER 8. WIDGETS

Figure 8.16: Scale and Slider resulting from the previous code

We can change the orientation of the Scale and Slider widgets depend-
ing on the style bist constants we use in the constructor(SWT.VERTICAL or
SWT.HORIZONTAL).
Optionally, you can use the SWT.BORDER constant to create a border around
the Scale widget, but this will not have any effect on the Slider widget.

ProgressBar
The main difference between the ProgressBar widgets and the Slider and
Scale widgets is that you cannot select it. It usually shows the progress
of a task and its principle style bit constants are: SWT.HORIZONTAL and
SWT.VERTICAL for the orientation, SWT.SMOOTH that makes a continue progress
line and SWT.INDETERMINATE that makes the progress line always get bigger
– as for some downloads under the Windows OS.
Here is a simple code example and its result:

Figure 8.17: ProgressBar code sample

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 8.2. USEFUL WIDGETS

Figure 8.18: ProgressBar resulting from the previous code

8.2.3 Text widget

A Text widget can be used to show or to edit text. You can also use a Styled-
Text widget if you want to display a coloured (characters or background)
text with different fonts and sizes.
To create your Text widget, you can use the following style bit constants:
SWT.MULTI or SWT.SINGLE to have a multi or single line widget, SWT.READ ONLY,
SWT.WRAP to break the lines at the end of the widget and, as the Text widget
is a scrollable widget, SWT.H SCROLL and SWT.V SCROLL to add horizontal or
vertical scrollbars to your Text widget.
Furthermore the Text widget has some interesting properties that can be set.
For example, if your text is editable, you can set the maximum number of
characters that can be put in by using the setTextLimit() method. You can
also create some kind of password text boxes by using the setEchoChar()
method with an asterisk character as argument.

The commented code on the following page shows how to create the three
specific kind of Text widgets appearing in the next window:

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Figure 8.19: Text sample code

Figure 8.20: Text resulting from the previous code

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 8.2. USEFUL WIDGETS

8.2.4 List widget

The List widget is usually used to display a list of string values that sends
a notification event to its listener when the user selects one of them. This
selection can be single or multiple, depending on the style bit constant used:
SWT.SINGLE or SWT.MULTI. And as the List is a Scrollable widget, you can
add scrollbars by using the SWT.H SCROLL or SWT.V SCROLL style bit con-
stant. And you can obviously add items to a list, by using the setItems()
or add() method.
In the following example, two lists are created. The first list uses the
SWT.H SCROLL style to create an horizontal scrollbar within the list. The
second one uses a MouseListener to respond to the MouseDown() and the
MouseUp() methods, as seen in the subsection 8.1.3.

This is the code that is necessary to get the result on the following page:

Figure 8.21: List sample code

Note that list2 must be declared as final in order to use it within the adapter.

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And here is the result of the previous code:

Figure 8.22: List resulting from the previous code

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 8.3. COMPOSITE WIDGETS

8.3 Composite widgets

As said in the previous chapters, a Composite widgets can contain other
Composite widgets which would be placed inside of the Composite by the
same way as the widgets are placed on a Shell. Then every widget position
inside the Composite is relative to this last one, so if this Composite is moved
on the Shell, the widgets inside of it keep their relative positions.

Figure 8.23: Composite can contain other composite classes

The Composite classes can usually contain other composite classes. This con-
tainment is built up by using the constructor of a Composite widget class.
But in contrary to the Swing GUI, there is not an add() method. So you
must use their constructors to build up a containment structure.
As you can see in the previous figure, the Shell class is also a Composite
class. This means that the Shell object can contain other Composite classes.
The Composite widgets are Scrollable, it is so possible to add scrollbars to
the Composite widgets by using the SWT.H SCROLL or SWT.V SCROLL style bit
constants. Furthermore, composite properties as the background colour can
be set except the text value.
The following code is an example that shows how to place a composite within
a Composite. The first Composite has a border and a coloured background,
so it is easily spotted on the screen. In order to use the setBackground()
method for any control, you need to import the Graphics library and create
a Color:

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CHAPTER 8. WIDGETS

Figure 8.24: Composite code sample

And this will produce the following result on the next page:

But first, note that if you do not give a border or a background to the com-
posite, you will not be able to distinguish it from the shell. The second com-
posite exists within the first. It has horizontal and vertical scrollbars, and a
list within the composite

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 8.3. COMPOSITE WIDGETS

Figure 8.25: Composite resulting from the previous code

8.3.1 Table widget

The Table widget usually displays a set of String items or Images. With a
Table, two options can be set: the lines and the column headers visibility.
Both of these properties are set as default to false. You will see how to set
these properties with the following source code. Note that in contrast to
other Composite widgets, adding Composite controls to the Table widget is
not possible. The Table sub-component must be of type TableItem.
The following style bit constants can be used: SWT.SINGLE or SWT.MULTI to
enable single or multiple selection, SWT.FULL SELECTION to enable the full
row selection, SWT.CHECK to display a checkbox at the beginning of each row
and obviously SWT.V SCROLL and SWT.H SCROLL.
Let’s see now how to construct a Table:

Figure 8.26: Table code sample

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Once the Table is created, it only has one column. And if you try to add any
items to the table, only the first field of the item will be displayed because
it is the wrong way to do it. In order to display all the fields you want, you
need to define TableColumns objects.

TableColumn
When you add TableColumns to your Table, you can use the following style
bit constants: SWT.LEFT, SWT.RIGHT and SWT.CENTER.

Figure 8.27: TableColumn code sample

Do not forget to set the column width, and its name if you want to display
the headers with the setWidth() and setText() methods.
After you have created and added the columns to your table, you are now
ready to add the TableItems objects.

TableItem
When you add a TableItem to your Table, you can not use any style bit
constant (except SWT.NONE if you want):

Figure 8.28: TableItem code sample

To set the text of an item, you can use the setText() method that will cre-
ate a TableItem with fields in the order that you defined them. If you want
to define one field at a time in a special order, you can use the setText(int,
string) method which places the text into a specific field in the record.

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 8.3. COMPOSITE WIDGETS

And now that you have created TableColumns and TableItems, your table is
full.

Let us have a look at three simple examples of tables and see the differ-
ent styles that can be used.

• The first table – just below – has a border, fixed size columns, with
different horizontal alignments.

Figure 8.29: Table source code example 1

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CHAPTER 8. WIDGETS

• The second table – just below – has a CheckBox column. We can set
the checked status of the item through the code. There are no grid
lines, but the header is visible. This example also sets the background
color of one of the table items.

Figure 8.30: Table source code example 2

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 8.3. COMPOSITE WIDGETS

• The last example – just below – uses the FULL SELECTION style, which
means that when you select a TableItem, the whole item is highlighted
instead of just the first field. The first column is resizable (this mean
you can make it larger or smaller). Note that each three columns has
a different horizontal alignment. This example also shows how you can
pre-select an item.

Figure 8.31: Table source code example 3

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CHAPTER 8. WIDGETS

And the following window is the result of these three examples:

Figure 8.32: Table resulting from the previous codes

8.3.2 Combo widget

The Combo widget allows users to select or add a new value to a list of values.
It is similar to the List, but uses a limited space.
If you want to place a Combo box on the Shell and add items to it, you can
use the following code:

Figure 8.33: Simplest Combo code sample

But although the Combo widget is a Composite, it does not make any sense
to add child elements to it if they are not of the type String. So, an element
to a Combo widget can be added by using the add(String element) method.
The following SWT style bit constants can be used: SWT.READ ONLY, SWT.SIMPLE
or SWT.DROP DOWN.

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Furthermore, if you want to add Items to a Combo, you can use the
setItems() method which takes an Array of Strings as argument. And then
to select one of the list items, you must use the select() method which
takes an integer as argument – the index of the item you want to select.
In the following example three Combos will be created. The first is a drop-
down list whose location and size are set, the second a simple Combo whose
location and size are set at one time using the setBounds() method and the
third a Combo with no Items.

Figure 8.34: Combo code sample

And on the next page, you will see the result...

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Figure 8.35: Combo resulting from the previous code

8.3.3 Tree
The Tree widgets are usually used to display informations (e.g. folders and
sub-folders for a file manager or classes and sub-classes for a class browser)
in a hierarchical format. And even if the Tree class is a Composite, you may
not add Composite classes to it except if it is of type TreeItem.
For a tree, the standard style bit constants are: SWT.MULTI to allow multiple
selections or SWT.SINGLE to allow the selection of only one item from the
Tree at a time and SWT.CHECK to add check boxes beside each item in the
tree. (As usual, you cannot specify SWT.SINGLE and SWT.MULTI at the same
time.)
The Tree we will create here with the following pieces of code allows multi-
ple selections, and has a border. As usual, the first parameter of the Tree
constructor is the Composite on which we want to place the tree, and the
second is the SWT style bit constants.

Figure 8.36: Tree code sample

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Once the Tree is created, we can now attach TreeItems to it. We will here
create the top-level TreeItem (i.e. the root). For this, the first parameter to
the constructor is the Tree that we want to attach the items to, the second
is the SWT style bit constant, and the (optional) last parameter is the index
at which to place the item in the tree. In the following code sample, you will
see how the first argument specifies that ”My Documents” will appear as the
middle element in the top-level of the tree, even it was added after the other
two items.

Figure 8.37: TreeItem source code example 1

Then if you want to create children TreeItems out of these root-level nodes,
you can use a similar constructor, except that this time, instead of specifying
the Tree to attach them to, you will specify the TreeItem so that they will
appear under. In our code sample, both of these nodes will appear under the
”My Computer” TreeItem. As in the above case, we can use the optional last
parameter to specify the index at which the new element should be placed
in the sub-tree.

Figure 8.38: TreeItem source code example 2

You can then continue the creating sub-trees process as many times as you
want only by creating more TreeItems out of other TreeItems. Here we extend
the Tree to a third level by creating a TreeItem ouut of the ”Local Disk”
TreeItem.

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Note that we could also add a different image to each TreeItem by loading
the image and then using TreeItems setImage() method, as follows where
the image will appear to the left of the Item text.

Figure 8.39: TreeImage code sample

The next step is to add a Listener to the tree. We will associate our Se-
lectionListener with the Tree as a whole, and so we will be allowed to use
the getSelection() method to return a list of the selected TreeItems. In
the example below, we are listening for changes in the selection(s), to get
an array of the TreeItems that are selected and print out the text from each
item. (For more informations on the SelectionListener, have a look to the
section 8.1.1)

Figure 8.40: TreeSelectionListener code sample

And we can also listen for collapsing and expanding of the tree using a
TreeListener. We will print ”Tree collapsed” and ”Tree expanded” when the
corresponding event occurs as you can see in the following source code:

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Figure 8.41: TreeListener code sample

The resulting program should look something like this:

Figure 8.42: Tree resulting from the previous codes

(Note that if you used a tree with the SWT.CHECK style bit constant, the
TreeItems getChecked() method could have been used to test whether a
particular Item in the tree had been checked.)

8.3.4 TabFolder
The TabFolder widget is usually used to select a page in a set of pages. Once
again, although it is a Composite you are not allowed to add Composite
widgets to it, except if it is of type TabItem. There are the two important
steps to create a TabItem:

1. if you want a Label on the tab, you need to use the setText() method

2. in order to populate the TabItem, you need to set the Control which it
contains, by using the setControl() method

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In the following example, buttonComp is a Composite. Since you can only set
one Control into a TabItem, a Composite is usually desired. And then you
can add several Control widgets to the Composite that will appear on the
specified TabItem. In this code, you will see that Events for tab changing
are built into the TabItem and TabFolder controls.

Figure 8.43: TabFolder sample code

As said, this example shows how to create a TabFolder with two TabItems
– one for buttons and one for labels. On the left, you see what it looks like
when the window initially appears, on the right, you see what the screen
looks like when you click on the ”Labels” tab.

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Figure 8.44: TabFolder resulting from the previous code

8.3.5 CoolBar
The CoolBar widget provides an area in which you add items that would be
dynamically re-positionable. Obviously, you can add one or more ToolBar
widgets to a CoolBar. The CoolBar can contain one or more CoolItems.
And once again, although a CoolBar is a Composite widget, it is not allowed
to add other composite classes because the sub-elements of a CoolBar must
be of the type CoolItem. We can place whatever Controls we like on each
CoolItem. In the following example, we will create in a standard way a
bordered CoolBar and four CoolItems – one empty CoolItem, two CoolItems
containing Buttons and a final CoolItem containing a ToolBar – specifying
”bar” as the CoolBar to which they should be added.

Figure 8.45: CoolBar code sample

Then we have to go through the creating process of every Control we will

place on the CoolItems. The first is a flat bordered button, that will be used
to demonstrate how to lock and to unlock of the CoolBar.

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Figure 8.46: CoolBar Button source code example 1

When we use the pack() method on the Button, we set it to its correct
size. The Listener that we next add to the button will call bar.setLocked(boolean)
to lock (or unlock) the CoolBar each time it is clicked on. This means that
when you click on it at first, it locks and the Toolbar removes its ability to
click and drag the CoolItems around within the bar.

Figure 8.47: CoolBar SelectionListener code sample

The next button is a simple button placed in its CoolItem.

Figure 8.48: CoolBar Button source code example 2

The next piece of code places a basic 2-button Toolbar on its own CoolItem.

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Figure 8.49: ToolBar code sample

Then, once we have created all the Controls we wanted, we can use:
the setControl() method to associate the Controls with the right Coo-
lItems, the setSize() method to set the initial size of each Control or the
setMinimumSize() method called on item3 to ensure that the CoolItem con-
taining the ToolBar does not shrink beneath the size we request – in this case
is the size of the ToolBar itself when the user rearranges the CoolBar.

Figure 8.50: CoolBar Point code sample

In the end, we can use the setWrapIndices() method to wrap some Coo-
lItems onto the next row at a particular index and the setSize() is called
on Bar to specify its size on the Shell.

Figure 8.51: CoolBar setWrapIndices method code sample

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Here is what the Coolbar looks like initially (on the left) and after some
rearrangement, a locking of the CoolBar (on the right):

Figure 8.52: CoolBar resulting from the previous codes

(Note that the most common use of CoolBars is to create dynamically re-
arrangeable Toolbars. For example, they are use in Eclipse. This is how
Eclipse and TeXnicCenter use them.)

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8.4 Menu Widgets

8.4.1 Menu
In this section, we will look at two examples of menus. The first will be the
most basic use, to create a simple menu with a selectable option on it, and
capture the event generated when it is selected. The second – more com-
plex than the first – will demonstrate some of the more complicated aspects
of menus, including sub-menus, accelerators, mnemonics, additional Events
that may be captured, and the various different types of menu items available.

But first, remark that the following style bit constants are available: SWT.PUSH,
SWT.CHECK to get a checkbox item, SWT.RADIO to get a radio button item,
SWT.SEPARATOR to provide an non-selectable dividing horizontal line between
other items and SWT.CASCADE.

Simple Menu
When you want to create the menu bar that spans the top of your Shell use
the following code which uses Menu and MenuItem widgets:

Figure 8.53: Menu (simple) code source example 1

The style bit constant for the menu bar is SWT.BAR.

Then, let us add an MenuItem to this Menu bar. We will create a ”File”
MenuItem. (Note that if you launch your application now with only these
lines, you will see a Menu bar at the Shell top with only the ”File” option
displayed. But if you select one of the options, nothing will happen. So, ver-
ify that the style bit constant is SWT.CASCADE. Otherwise you will be unable
to attach a drop-down Menu to it.

Figure 8.54: MenuItem (simple) source code example 1

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We will now create a Menu to the File option and attach MenuItems to
it. (Note that the style constant for the menu must be DROP DOWN)

Figure 8.55: Menu (simple) source code example 2

Finally, we can now add a MenuItem to our file Menu, and then associate an
action with it to create a basic selectable MenuItem on the ”File” Menu.

Figure 8.56: MenuItem (simple) source code example 2

Then, in order to be notified when this option is selected, we add a listener

that will output the words ”Action performed!” to the console, whenever the
”Action” option is chosen, like so:

Figure 8.57: Menu (simple) Listener code source example 1

Repeating these steps with more Menus and MenuItems is all you need to
do to create a useful set of simple menus for your program.

And on the following page, you will see the resulting menu:

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Figure 8.58: Menu (simple) resulting from the previous codes

Advanced Menu
Let us now start the longer example with the same initial code as the
first example. The following code demonstrates how to use the SWT.CHECK,
SWT.SEPARATOR and SWT.RADIO options. It will create a separator and a
CheckBox-style MenuItem followed by radio-button styled MenuItem.

Figure 8.59: MenuItem (advanced) source code example 3

In the next few lines we add Listener s to the Check- and Radio- MenuItems,
which output their current values (true or false) to the console.

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Figure 8.60: Menu (advanced) Listener code source example 2

Let us now add a sub-menu that branches off of the file menu, which is
very similar to how we attached our ”File” Menu to the Menu bar. Then we
create a new MenuItem with the SWT.CASCADE style bit constant, and a new
Menu to attach to it. We then call setMenu() method on the MenuItem to
which we attach the new menu.

Figure 8.61: MenuItem (advanced) code source example 4

In the next few lines we add a MenuItem to our new sub-menu. This new
MenuItem that we have added will be called ”SubAction”.
Notice that in the setText() method call, there is an ampersand(&) before
the letter 0 S0 . This will create a mnemonic for the SubAction command, so
that when the submenu is displayed, if you press the S KEY it will select it
as if you had used the mouse. Then the call to setAccelerator() associates
the SubAction MenuItem with the key combination Control-S, so the user
can execute the SubAction command without bringing up the menu.

Figure 8.62: MenuItem (advanced) code source example 5

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Then we add an additional option to the sub-menu which will be used to

demonstrate the enabling and disabling operations of the MenuItems. This
check box will enable/disable the SubAction we just added.

Figure 8.63: MenuItem (advanced) code source example 6

There exist several ways to add Listener s that we did not look at in our
simple example. One of these is the ability to add listeners to the Menus
(rather than to the MenuItems as we did before.) Let us add a MenuListener
to our sub-menu, which notifies us whenever it is shown or hidden.

Figure 8.64: Menu (advanced) Listener code source example 3

Then let us demonstrate how it is possible to enable and disable MenuItems

by using another check box MenuItem where we disable SubAction to begin,
so its text is shown shaded in the menu. After we have disabled it you cannot
select the option, and its accelerator also no longer works. The rest of the
code sets up the listener that will disable or enable the SubAction MenuItem
depending on whether the ”Enable SubAction” check box is checked.

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Figure 8.65: Menu (advanced) sub-action code source example 1

Remark that in the previous examples, we used a generic Listener. Let

us now use the more specific SelectionListener (seen in section 8.1.1). And
as before we will print a message to the console at each activation.

Figure 8.66: Menu (advanced) sub-action code source example 2

Another interesting Listener is the ArmListener, that is fired when a Menu-

Item is highlighted with the mouse or keyboard, but not yet selected. The
following code prints a message when the SubAction is armed.

Figure 8.67: Menu (advanced) sub-action code source example 3

The final listener type is the HelpListener. This mean that by pressing the
F1/HELP KEY, the HelpListener is activated.

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Figure 8.68: Menu (advanced) sub-action code source example 4

You can see just below the result of the preceding codes. If you select
the ”Enable” SubAction option, you will enable SubAction and if you type
Ctrl+S, this will execute SubAction as well, but only if Enable SubAction is
checked. Note that all the listeners print messages to the console when they
are activated.

Figure 8.69: Menu (advanced) resulting from the previous codes

It exists other facilities available for Menus and MenuItems, but we have
attempted to cover the majority of the useful ones. Next we will look briefly
at a simple pop-up menu.

8.4.2 Pop-Up Menu

The Pop-up Menus are usually used for the context-sensitive menus on dif-
ferent areas of the screen, rather than making the user go to a Menu bar at
the top of the screen and hunt for the option he wants. The right-click on

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the Composite that has a pop-up menu associated is a kind of shortcut that
will make appear a floating menu beside your mouse allowing you to select
an option from a list like a regular menu. In the example of this section, a
Button will be created in a Composite on a Shell. Then two Pop-up Menus
will be created. The first will be associated with the Shell and the Composite
while the other with the Button.
So, we create a Menu, as we did in the section 8.4.1, except that its style
bit constant will be SWT.POP UP. We then add an MenuItem and attach a
Listener to capture its selection events.

Figure 8.70: PopUp menu source code example 1

Then we repeat the process, with the Menu associated with the Button.

Figure 8.71: PopUp menu source code example 2

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Next we create the Composite and Button, and place them on the Shell.

Figure 8.72: PopUp menu Composite code sample

And finally, let us set the Pop-up menus.

Figure 8.73: PopUp menu setMenu()

Now if we run the code, and right-click on the Button, it will display one
menu, but if we right-click the Composite or Shell, we get another menu with
different options. In the following screen shots we can see the Pop-up menu
that is displayed when right-clicking on the Button (on the left) and outside
of it (on the right).

Figure 8.74: PopUp menu resulting from the previous codes

Although this is a simple example, Pop-up menus can be just as complex as

the Menus in the section 8.4.1

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8.5 A summary of controls having items

To summarize the preceding chapter, there exist Control s that only accept
sub components of type Item. These Control s are listed below.

Figure 8.75: Widget needing Item summary

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Chapter 9

Layouts

What is and what does a layout? - It automatically controls the position

and the size of all the widgets inside of a Composite. In SWT, the size of
a widget inside a composite is not automatically set (the layout can do this
for you). Each composite requires a layout to show its children controls that
need to be set or SWT will not be able to set the Control s size and position
inside a composite and our controls will not be visible.
The layout Manager classes are inherited from an abstract class: Layout.
Some of them allow us to set different properties for each control. Those
Layout classes have an addition object that can be set separately for each
Control widget inside of a Composite. The Control class provides a standard
method, setLayoutData(Object obj), to set this addition parameter. You
have to set an appropriate layout data object for each control, otherwise it
throws a classcast exception.

Figure 9.1: SWT Layout manager hierarchy

All the component in the Composite are affected by the layout properties.
Some layouts support layout data objects to set different properties for each
Control within a Composite. These properties can be set by using a layout’s

87
member variables. If you are familiar with SWING, you would probably
search for methods to set and get these member variables. In SWT, it is
different: you read and write to those variables directly.

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9.1 FillLayout
The FillLayout is the simplest (and set by default) Layout. If there is only
one component, the FillLayout makes it fills the whole available area of the
composite. If there are more than one components, it forces them all to get
the same size in a column (or a line, depending on the style bit constant of
the Layout). No options are available to control the spacing, the margins or
the wrapping.
The style bit constants for this layout are: SWT.HORIZONTAL (used by default)
or SWT.VERTICAL to position the controls either in a single row or a column.
You can set this in the constructor, or later as a field of the layout.

Figure 9.2: FillLayout code sample

The FillLayout is usually used for ToolMenu bar, Group or Composite having
only one child. Besides that, it might be used to stack the check boxes or
radio buttons in a group.
The width and height of a Control within a Composite are determined by the
parent composite. Initially, the height of any control is equal to the highest,
and the width of a control is equal to the widest.

Figure 9.3: FillLayout resulting from window resizing

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9.2 RowLayout
The RowLayout is very similar to FillLayout (seen in the chapter 9.1). It
positions the Control s in the same way as the FillLayout: in rows or columns.
You can use the following code to use a RowLayout in your application:

Figure 9.4: RowLayout code sample

And in addition to the FillLayout, the RowLayout provides configuration

fields to control the position of a control within a composite as:

• if the number of widgets does not fit in a row, it wraps them (wrap
field set to true by default) as you can see it (from left to right)

Figure 9.5: RowLayout wrapping sample

• configurable margins (marginBottom, marginRight, marginTop and

marginLeft fields are set to 3 by default)

Figure 9.6: RowLayout margins and spacing sample

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• a RowData is provided

Figure 9.7: RowLayoutData code sample

Figure 9.8: RowLayoutData sample

Note that you can also use the following RowLayout fields: pack to force all
the component of a Composite to have the same size and justify to spread
the widgets of a Composite across the available space.

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9.3 GridLayout
The GridLayout is the most useful, flexible and powerful layout.It lays out
the widgets in grids and has a lot of configureable properties we will see
below. To set a different property for a specific cell, you need to create a
GridData object and set this as the control’s layout data object.
To use this layout in your application, you can use the following code sample:

Figure 9.9: GridLayout code sample

The GridLayout provides configuration fields to control the position of a

control within a composite as:
• The numColumns field must be set to specify the number of columns
in the GridLayout. If the number of components added is bigger than
the components number of the composite, the layout adds them to a
new row. E.g. five components added to a GridLayout that only has
four columns will make that the fifth component will be added to a the
second row. The marginWidth and marginHeight to set the margins
values,horizontalSpacing and verticalSpacing to set the spacings,
can be set, too.

Figure 9.10: GridLayout number of columns and spacings sample

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• The makeColumnEqualWidth property set to ”true” makes the columns

the same size. (If you want the widgets also to be the same size,
you should need to use GridData object’s horizontal/vertical alignment
properties). You can see below a window without this property (on the
left), and after we activate this last one (on the right).

Figure 9.11: GridLayout with column of equal width sample

• A GridData which set a different property for each widget, is provided

by the GridLayout. The most useful GridData properties are shown
below:

Figure 9.12: GridData code sample

– The horizontalSpan (or verticalSpan) property sets how many

column(s) (or lines) we want our component takes. You can see
the effect on the first component when this property is set to 1
(by default, on the left) or to 2 (on the right).

Figure 9.13: GridData horizontal spanning sample

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• The grabExcessHorizontalSpace (or grabExcessVerticalSpace) prop-

erty, when set to true, makes the width of the grids will be as large as
possible. You can see this effect on the first component of the bottom
picture, instead of the top picture for which this property is set to false.

Figure 9.14: GridData with the largest cell width sample

• The horizontalAlignment (or verticalAlignment) property sets the

alignment of the Control. You can use this in combination with the
grabExcessHorizontalSpace property and see below what happens when
it is set to ”left” (top picture), ”center” (centered picture) or ”right”
(bottom picture).

Figure 9.15: GridData with horizontal alignment sample

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9.4 FormLayout
The FormLayout is, as the GridLayout, a very flexible layout, but it works in
a completely different way. Indeed, in contrast to GridLayout, FormLayout is
independent from the complete layout. The position and size of the compo-
nents depend on one Control. The properties you can set are marginWidth
and marginHeight that allow to set the margin values. You can use the
following code to manage your application with a FormLayout:

Figure 9.16: FormLayout code sample

Each widget within a composite having a FormLayout can have a FormData

to set the different layout properties for a widget. The FormData object
has the following properties: width, height, top, bottom, left and right
whose functions seem to be obvious.
A FormData object can have 0 or 4 FormAttachment objects. The FormAt-
tachment object can have the following properties: alignment to specify
the alignment of the Control side that is attached to a Control, control to
specify the Control to which the Control side is attached, denominator to
specify the denominator (set by default to 100), numerator to specify the
numerator and offset to specify the offset, in pixels, of the Control side
from the attachment position.

Figure 9.17: FormData and FormAttachement sample

The following code shows how to use the FormLayout manager:

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Figure 9.18: FormData code sample

You can see the result of the previous code on the following page (on the
right, when you try to increase the size of the window)

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Figure 9.19: FormData resulting from the previous code

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9.5 StackLayout
The StackLayout is quite different from the other layout managers. Only one
Control is displayed at a time instead of every Control s for the other layouts.
We usually use the StackLayout for the property pages, wizards,... Its most
usual properties are: marginHeight, marginWidth to set the margin values
and topControl to specify the Control that is displayed at the top of the
stack.

Here is an example to show you how to use a StackLayout:

Figure 9.20: StackLayout code example 1/2

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Figure 9.21: StackLayout code example 2/2

We have here three (1)Groups and we add Button controls to those

groups. Then, we need to set the (2)initial topControl. We create an action
Listener so that when the button is clicked it (3)changes the topControl
and calls the layout() method of the (4)parent Control. This step is very
important because if you do not call the layout() method, you will not be
able to see any change.

And here is the result: from the left to the right, we only clicked on the
”Show next group” button:

Figure 9.22: StackLayout resulting from the previous code

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Appendix A

SWT editors

As you can see, during this tutorial, we decided to explain the SWT installa-
tion, philosophy and how to implement an application with this Java library
developed by IBM. But, as visual editor for Swing and AWT are available,
free SWT visual editors appeared at the end of the year 2004.

That is why we decided to make this appendix to give you some url ad-
dress where to find free- or shareware versions. Most of the freeware versions
are developed as Eclipse plug-ins because it is a library developed by IBM
and specially used by the Eclipse environment (developed by IBM, too). But
some other – shareware this time – can be used by other IDE as WebSphere.
• http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/indextools.cgi/vep-home/WebContent/docs/
newAndNoteworthy/1.0.0-final/vep-news-final.html?rev=1.2 (freeware)
• http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-ecca/ (free-
ware)
• http://www.instantiations.com/swt-designer/home content.html (shareware)

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Appendix B

An interesting custom widget

example

To display a picture on a screen is quite easy, but sometimes, we would

like to be allowed to zoom in (or zoom out of) it with a scale widget and
obviously, that scrollbars appears when the picture will be to large for the
Canvas widget. The example developed in this chapter will do this: a zoomed
scrolled viewer widget. This widget will contain a Canvas, ScrollBars, and a
scale grouped together in one Composite.
Notice that a ScrolledComposite has already been created. In this example,
we will use this ScrolledComposite custom Control within our own custom
Control, instead of building it from scratch.
So, let us have a look on the following page at the skeleton we will use. For
this, we decided to create every widget in the constructor using a GridLayout
(shown in section 9.3). To initialize and place our widgets, we will do this by
calling the setup() method that will act on the Composite, the Scale and
the Label.

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 Figure B.1: custom ZoomedScrolledCanvas code sample

• To setup the composite, we must choose a layout data and attach to it

the canvas so that we can draw the image within the scrollbars.

Figure B.2: custom setComp() method code sample

• Then, to setup the scale, we need to specify the maximum, minimum,

increment, and current selection (and the layout data).

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Figure B.3: custom setupScale() method code sample

• And finally, to setup the label, we need to give its layout data and some
text.

Figure B.4: custom setupZoom() method code sample

The next thing we must do is to draw the image onto the canvas. For this,
we will first set the size of the Canvas and of the ScrolledComposite and an
image that will appear in its full size. We then need to add a paint listener
to (re-)draw the image that will be scaled to the size of the Canvas. This is
really useful, because when we are zooming on the picture, we will only need
to change the size of the canvas and when this happens, a paint event will
be triggered and the image will be redrawn every time using the size of the
Canvas. Note that we also have a dispose listener to dispose of the image
when the Canvas is disposed.

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 Figure B.5: custom setImage() method code sample

Now that our appearance Control is set up, we will add a SelectionLis-
tener to the Scale to zoom in or out of the image depending on the changed
value on the Scale. In this Listener, we calculate a new size based on the
zoom factor and resize the canvas. (When the canvas is resized in the Selec-
tionListener, a PaintEvent will be generated by the PaintListener placed on
our Canvas, and so the image will be drawn at its new size.

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APPENDIX B. AN INTERESTING CUSTOM WIDGET EXAMPLE

Figure B.6: custom SelectionListener code sample

And finally, to see the widget in action, we use it in exactly the same way
as we would use any widget.

Figure B.7: custom last step code sample

SWT Tutorial 107 Semester project, 2004

 We set the size and the position of our widget just as we would with a
basic widget. The only custom parameter you must set is the image. We
set the image to be sunset.JPG. The following screen is generated from this
code:

Figure B.8: custom application resulting from the previous codes

When we move the zoom scale down, the image gets smaller:

Figure B.9: custom application used 1

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APPENDIX B. AN INTERESTING CUSTOM WIDGET EXAMPLE

When we move the zoom scale up, the image gets larger and we can scroll
through it:

Figure B.10: custom application used 2

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Semester project, 2004 110 SWT Tutorial
Bibliography

Eclipse Building Commercial-Quality Plug-ins (Clayberg, Rubel)

http://www.eclipse.org
http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/∼eclipse/9-Custom.pdf
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWT
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing
http://www.3plus4software.de/sma/Ein SWT Tutorial.html
http://swt-tutorial.ch.vu

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