Metawidget and JIDE

Update: the APIs shown in this blog entry have changed slightly in newer releases of Metawidget. Specifically you can now use WidgetBuilders to plug in third-party component libraries. Please download the latest documentation from http://metawidget.org

I was recently asked whether Metawidget can output JIDE components instead of standard Swing ones. The answer is yes! Metawidget makes it easy to support third-party component libraries. Here's how:

Step 1: Derive your own JideMetawidget

Subclass SwingMetawidget and override its buildActiveWidget method to select JIDE components. For example:

package com.myapp.metawidget.jide;

import static org.metawidget.inspector.InspectionResultConstants.*;
import java.util.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import org.metawidget.util.ClassUtils;
import com.jidesoft.spinner.DateSpinner;

public class JideMetawidget extends SwingMetawidget {

   public JComponent buildActiveWidget(Map<String, String> attributes)
      throws Exception {
      String type = attributes.get( TYPE );

      if ( type != null ) {
         Class<?> clazz = ClassUtils.niceForName( type );

         // Use JIDE DateSpinner
         if (Date.class.isAssignableFrom( clazz )) {
            DateSpinner dateSpinner = new DateSpinner();
            dateSpinner.setFormat( "dd/MM/yyyy" );
            return dateSpinner;
         }
      }

      // Not for JIDE
      return super.buildActiveWidget( attributes );
   }
}

That's it! You'll get all the other Metawidget benefits (like layouts, Beans Binding, etc.) for free.

Step 2: Use JideMetawidget in your Application

To try it, download the Metawidget source and update the Swing Address Book example's ContactDialog to say...

final SwingMetawidget metawidget = new JideMetawidget();

...(on about line 135). Run the example, double click on Homer Simpson and you'll see the JIDE DateSpinner component used for the 'Date of Birth' field (previously it was just a JTextField, because vanilla Swing doesn't have a Date picker):


Note: JIDE's DateSpinner doesn't support null values, but
in the Address Book example Date is a nullable field. This causes errors if you click on anything other than Homer Simpson. Note that SwingX's JXDatePicker doesn't have this problem.