Package org.jdesktop.swingx.action
Action
and have properties like name and icon. The
user actions
are represented in the user interface by controls like menu items and
toolbar buttons.
The other type of actions used by the architecture are the internal
swing Actions (refered to as behaviour actions) that are embedded
within the ActionMap
of a JComponent
.
These two types of actions are distinct from each other: user actions
have a lot of properties but very little semantics by default
(unless explicity bound). Behavior actions have no properties but have
semantics. These two types of actions are linked by the action id
which is the value of the Action.ACTION_COMMAND_KEY
The AbstractActionExt
class extends the Swing
concept of the Action by adding support for toggle or two state actions.
Toggle type actions may be grouped into a set of mutually exclusive actions.
This binary actions are represented in the user interface as JToggleButtons,
JCheckBoxMenuItems or JRadioButtonMenuItems.
There are two types of user actions: A BoundAction
is an action that will invoke a specific method. It may be bound to an explict
component, a callback method on an object instance or one or more listeners.
A TargetableAction
is an action that doesn't have an
explicit binding and the invocation will be sent to an arbitrator
(the TargetManager
) which dispatches the Action
to the "current component" - represented by a Targetable instance.
The current component may be explictly set by some programmatic
policy (for example, changes in state).
By defalt, the current component will be driven by the focus policy as dictated by the current FocusManager. If the current component cannot handle the action then the action will be dispatched up the containment hierarchy until the action is consumed. If the action is not consumed then it will be dispatched to the Application instance which manages an application global set of actions.
These are the key classes or the actions architecture:
-
ActionManager
- A repository of all shared actions in the application. There will be one instance per application which can be accessed via the Application object (was ClientApp)
ActionContainerFactory
- Constructs JMenuBars, JMenus, JPopupMenus and JToolBars using lists of action ids. This functionality may be migrated into ActionManager.
TargetableAction
- Represents an unbound Action. The invocation of this action will be dispatched to the TargetManager.
BoundAction
- Represents an action which has an exclicit binding.
TargetManager
- Manages the targetable policy for actions which have no explicit binding. The policy can be set by changes in application state, event based criteria or whatever. If the policy has not been set then it will dispatch the action to the current focusable component.
Targetable
- An interface that contains a few methods which expose actions to the TargetManager. Targetable objects don't have to be visual components they only have to be able to handle action invocations.
Richard Bair
-
ClassDescriptionExtends the concept of the Action to include toggle or group states.Creates user interface elements based on action ids and lists of action ids.A collection of static methods to make it easier to construct Actions.The ActionManager manages sets of
javax.swing.Action
s for an application.A class that represents the many type of actions that this framework supports.A class that represents an action which will fire a sequence of actions.An action for opening aURI
in a browser.An action which will invoke an http POST operation.An interface which exposes the allowable actions to a TargetManager.A class that represents a dynamically targetable action.The target manager dispatches commands toTargetable
objects that it manages.Added to the Toggle type buttons and menu items so that various components which have been created from a single StateChangeAction can be in synch.