Recent Posts by Geertjan Wielenga

In this the final part of this ad-hoc series on context-sensitive actions for file-based nodes... we'll do something pretty radical—we'll use the loosely coupled ChildFactories from yesterday's blog entry to provide loosely coupled data sources. That's exactly what the Institute of Marine Research (IMR) in Bergen, Norway, needs. Look at the screenshots below, you see two nodes, each providing access to different data... in the same TopComponent. While I integrated with the...

Rather than finding a TopComponent for each Node (as done yesterday), let's share a single TopComponent between multiple Nodes. The benefit is that, well, you'll only have one TopComponent to maintain. You'll simply assign a different ChildFactory to the TopComponent's ExplorerManager, i.e., on the fly, programmatically, as and when needed. Above, the Node hierarchy in the Details view is built from a ChildFactory registered in the layer. Hence, when a module is added from...

In part 1, we created an Action for files of a certain type in the NetBeans Platform. What was special was that the Action is contextually sensitive to a custom defined "OpenCapability" interface. If an implementation of that interface is present, something can happen. If it is absent, something different can happen. But what is it that can happen? I.e., how can the above infrastructure be used to do something useful? In this second part, we continue by looking at a scenario...

Today Toni Epple and I completed the delivery of the training/workshop at the Institute of Marine Research (IMR) in Bergen, Norway. It can definitely be seen as a successful adventure. The first three days were spent doing the NetBeans Platform Certified Training, focusing on all the main themes of the NetBeans Platform (module system, window system, lookup, filesystem, nodes, explorer views, and visual library)... ...as well as a long list of miscellaneous topics (from 'how...

Here's a capability for opening something: package no.imr.viewer;public interface OpenCapability { public void open();} In my DataObject, I assign the OpenCapability to the dynamic Lookup of the DataObject, take note of the code in bold below: public class IMRCategoryDataObject extends MultiDataObject {InstanceContent content = new InstanceContent(); public IMRCategoryDataObject(FileObject pf, MultiFileLoader loader) throws DataObjectExistsException, IOException { ...

My small iBatis based sample application is really taking shape now. Apart from the cool PropertyPanel integration in the central editor area below, the other noteworthy thing is that all three of the windows are aware of changes to the underlying model. So, when either the Properties window or the editor are used to change a property, all the other windows are notified and appropriate events take place, such as the display name of the node in the viewer on the left getting...

I found a bunch of movies on YouTube by the NetBeans User Group Serbia (NUGS), taken during the time Toni and I gave a training recently at the University of Belgrade. Here's a nice one showing a small part of Toni's explanation on FileObject vs DataObject vs Node: Now read Porting Neuroph to NetBeans Platform, which announces the recent official NUGS plans to move their Neuroph neural network editor to the NetBeans Platform, as well as Neuroph on Hadoop: Massive Parallel...

Toni and I are visiting the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen, Norway, where a set of heavily data-centric applications (i.e., for processing data coming back from research cruises all over the world) are being integrated into a consolidated application on the NetBeans Platform. A snapshot of the group to give a quick impression: They're strongly in favor of using free & open-source solutions, of which the NetBeans Platform is obviously one. (In several cases, we're...

On the dev mailing list, Mario Schroeder wanted to get started with Exif on the NetBeans Platform, while Ernie Rael has been asking about ContextAwareAction. So I looked into both at the same time, creating an Exif Reader for JPEG/JPG files (on top of this library), if Exif metadata is identified in the selected file. In that case, a popup menu item appears on the node in the Favorites window, and the reader in the navigator mode opens (as shown below), with related...