Question

I am writing an Eclipse plugin, and in response to some action I am interesting in starting a series of operations (within a separate job). One of these operations is to request the user to provide a filename, which I’m trying to do with the JFace JDialog.

However, I’m not clear how to do this in a modeless way; for example, where do I obtain a display and shell? How do I ensure the UI continues to work while the developer can edit stuff in the dialog?

Answer 1

May be you could see how Eclipse itself does it:

FindAndReplaceDialog.java

 /**   * Creates a new dialog with the given shell as parent.   * @param parentShell the parent shell   */  public FindReplaceDialog(Shell parentShell) {      super(parentShell);       fParentShell= null;       [...]       readConfiguration();       setShellStyle(SWT.CLOSE | SWT.MODELESS | SWT.BORDER | SWT.TITLE | SWT.RESIZE);      setBlockOnOpen(false);  }   /**   * Returns this dialog's parent shell.   * @return the dialog's parent shell   */  public Shell getParentShell() {      return super.getParentShell();  }  /**  * Sets the parent shell of this dialog to be the given shell.  *  * @param shell the new parent shell  */ public void setParentShell(Shell shell) {     if (shell != fParentShell) {          if (fParentShell != null)             fParentShell.removeShellListener(fActivationListener);          fParentShell= shell;         fParentShell.addShellListener(fActivationListener);     }      fActiveShell= shell; } 

It does manage its parent shell depending on the focus of the Dialog.

 /**   * Updates the find replace dialog on activation changes.   */  class ActivationListener extends ShellAdapter {      /*       * @see ShellListener#shellActivated(ShellEvent)       */      public void shellActivated(ShellEvent e) {          fActiveShell= (Shell)e.widget;          updateButtonState();           if (fGiveFocusToFindField && getShell() == fActiveShell &&                 okToUse(fFindField))              fFindField.setFocus();       }       /*       * @see ShellListener#shellDeactivated(ShellEvent)       */      public void shellDeactivated(ShellEvent e) {          fGiveFocusToFindField= false;           storeSettings();           [...]           fActiveShell= null;          updateButtonState();      }  } 

A ShellAdapter is provides default implementations for the methods described by the ShellListener interface, which provides methods that deal with changes in state of Shell.