Eclipse plugin development: Show custom MyLyn notification dialog

November 9th, 2009

Here’s an easy way to create a notification from inside eclipse (triggered by your own plugin), without any effort at all. MyLyn-core has a nice popup that looks great cross-platform, fades out and is visible outside the eclipse IDE, even when minimised (and also cross-desktop on ubuntu).

Using this popup is very easy:

  1. Add org.eclipse.mylyn.commons.ui as dependency for your plugin (see screenshot below)
  2. Create a class that extends the (internal) class AbstractNotificationPopup (org.eclipse.mylyn.internal.provisional.commons.ui.AbstractNotificationPopup), see code snippet 1. Note the “SupressWarnings” annotation, to get rid of the annoying compiler-warnings bugging us about “restricted” use… We know what we’re doing ;)
  3. You can show the popup the same way you should treat another Dialog, have a look at snippet 2.

Code snippet 1

package be.stacktrace.notification;
 
import org.eclipse.mylyn.internal.provisional.commons.ui.AbstractNotificationPopup;
import org.eclipse.swt.SWT;
import org.eclipse.swt.graphics.Image;
import org.eclipse.swt.layout.GridData;
import org.eclipse.swt.layout.GridLayout;
import org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Composite;
import org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display;
import org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Label;
 
import be.stacktrace.jfarse.Activator;
 
@SuppressWarnings("restriction")
public class MyNotificationPopup extends AbstractNotificationPopup {
 
	public MyNotificationPopup(Display display) {
		super(display);
	}
 
	@Override
	protected void createContentArea(Composite composite) {
		composite.setLayout(new GridLayout(1, true));
		Label testLabel = new Label(composite, SWT.WRAP);
		testLabel.setLayoutData(new GridData(GridData.FILL_HORIZONTAL));
 
		testLabel.setText("Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. "
				+ "Maecenas nunc elit, vulputate vel sollicitudin nec, vehicula ut est. Sed diam risus, "
				+ "dignissim eu sodales vitae, vestibulum et libero.");
		testLabel.setBackground(composite.getBackground());
	}
 
	@Override
	protected String getPopupShellTitle() {
		// Return a custom title
		return "Stacktrace.be ";
	}
 
	@Override
	protected Image getPopupShellImage(int maximumHeight) {
		// Use createResource to use a shared Image instance of the ImageDescriptor
		return (Image) Activator.getImageDescriptor("/icons/information.png")
				.createResource(Display.getDefault());
	}
}

Code snippet 2

...
 MyNotificationPopup popup = new MyNotificationPopup(window.getShell().getDisplay());
 popup.create();
 popup.open();
...

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2 Comments

  1. SpeecenceVark December 12th, 2009

    Excuse me for commenting OFFTOPIC - which wordpress template are you using? It looks great!!

  2. Frederik Heremans December 12th, 2009

    I’m using SH Trocadero 1.0 by ShinRa, a bit modified using ubuntu-logo on the left-top and stacktrace top-right

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