Question

I’m wondering if it is possible to determine what input was just entered inside of an editor in Eclipse – I’m currently working off of the example JDT editor – and then perform an action based on that input.

e.g.: I have a file example.jav open in my editor window. I push the ‘a’ key. ‘a’ would appear in the editor window per normal, but ‘a’ would also print out to the console.

Obviously the operation I’ll be performing will be more complicated than a System.out.println() statement, but if someone could help show me where the change gets detected by the editor itself, I can take it from there.

A few notes:

• I’m working in Eclipse 3.7.2 with Java 1.7
• If you cannot find the JDT example editor, go to Help > Welcome > Samples and click on “Java Editor”.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Figured it out!

As the Editor API is so vast in eclipse that it is difficult to know where to start, I focused on adding a KeyListener to my Shell. Turns out that is slightly problematic in SWT, as when an item inside the Shell gains focus, the Shell itself looses focus. After a bit of searching though, I stumbled across someone else who had the same problem. By adding a filter to the Shell’s display, you can add a Listener object which works for the entire application. Such as:

IWorkbenchWindow window = PlatformUI.getWorkbench().getActiveWorkbenchWindow();
Shell shell = window.getShell();
shell.getDisplay().addFilter(SWT.KeyDown, new Listener()
                {
                    public void handleEvent(Event event)
                    {
                        System.out.println("" + event.character);
                    }
                });

To further this and only worry about keys pressed in a specific non-widget part (otherwise you could just add a KeyListener to that part) you can add a check to make sure that the currently active part is the same as whatever part you wish to perform the actions for by using a simple if check.

final IWorkbenchWindow window = PlatformUI.getWorkbench().getActiveWorkbenchWindow();
Shell shell = window.getShell();
shell.getDisplay().addFilter(SWT.KeyDown, new Listener()
                {
                    public void handleEvent(Event event)
                    {
                        IWorkbenchPage page = window.getActivePage();
                        IWorkbenchPart part = page.getActivePart();
                        IEditorPart editor = page.getActiveEditor();
                        if(part.equals(editor))
                        {
                            System.out.println("" + event.character);
                        }
                    }
                });

Here is hoping that this helps someone else have an easier time than I had finding the solution!