| // |
| // Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one |
| // or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file |
| // distributed with this work for additional information |
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| // to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the |
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| // |
| // http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 |
| // |
| // Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, |
| // software distributed under the License is distributed on an |
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| // |
| |
| = DevFaqDataObject |
| :jbake-type: wiki |
| :jbake-tags: wiki, devfaq, needsreview |
| :jbake-status: published |
| :keywords: Apache NetBeans wiki DevFaqDataObject |
| :description: Apache NetBeans wiki DevFaqDataObject |
| :toc: left |
| :toc-title: |
| :syntax: true |
| |
| === What is a DataObject? |
| |
| link:http://bits.netbeans.org/dev/javadoc/org-openide-loaders/index.html?org/openide/loaders/DataObject.html[DataObjects] wrap link:DevFaqFileObject.asciidoc[FileObjects]. (If you do not want to visualize files on disk in an explorer view or create a text editor [with syntax coloring, etc] for files, then you will never need to touch DataObjects.) A FileObject is just a container |
| for data; it happens to have a MIME type, but like `java.io.File`, it doesn't know or care what kind |
| of file it represents, or what data it contains. DataObject is part of the link:http://www.netbeans.org/download/dev/javadoc/org-openide-loaders/overview-summary.html[Loaders API] - a good overview of this API can be found link:http://www.netbeans.org/download/dev/javadoc/org-openide-loaders/overview-summary.html[here]. |
| |
| A DataObject represents one or more (typically only one) FileObjects. A DataObject knows what kind of a file it represents. It may represent the parsed contents of a file such as a `.java` file. Or, |
| as in the case of link:DevFaqInstanceDataObject.asciidoc[InstanceDataObject], the file _name_ may have semantic meaning. For example, a file with the name `org-netbeans-modules-speech-SpeakAction.instance` literally is an instruction to "Load the class `org.netbeans.modules.speech.SpeakAction`, and create an instance of it using its default (no argument) constructor" (this technique is commonly used in the link:DevFaqSystemFilesystem.asciidoc[system filesystem] to register Java objects installed by modules - more about that link:DevFaqFolderOfInstances.asciidoc[here]). |
| |
| DataObjects are produced by link:DevFaqDataLoader.asciidoc[DataLoaders], which modules register for specific file types. For each file type, there is (usually) one DataLoader. For each file of that type, there is one DataObject. |
| |
| DataObjects are seldom referred to by Java subclass. If you are casting a DataObject to its implementation class, you are probably doing something wrong. This is a general rule for which there can be exceptions, but is especially true if you're doing the cast from code in a different module than the one in which the DataObject was defined. Instead, the usage pattern is to _ask_ a DataObject for instances of interfaces that are the things your code will actually interact with, by calling `DataObject.getLookup().lookup(SomeType.class)` (link:DevFaqLookup.asciidoc[more about Lookup]). |
| |
| As a simple example, the NetBeans APIs define an interface `org.netbeans.api.actions.Openable`. It has |
| one method, `open()`. That method will open the file in the editor. |
| |
| What exactly will happen when `open()` is called is entirely up to the module that implements the DataObject and Openable. The rest of the system does not need to know any of the implementation details - it just needs to know if the DataObject has an Openable. If it does, then the Open action on its context menu can be enabled, and that action will call |
| `theDataObject.getLookup().lookup(Openable.class).open()`. |
| |
| As suggested above, a DataObject may actually represent more than one file - so when you expand a folder |
| in the UI, there may actually be fewer DataObjects in that folder than there are files. This is why, in the |
| NetBeans IDE, a Swing form is represented by a `.java` file and a corresponding `.form` |
| file, but the `.form` file is not visible in the UI. `.properties` files have also used |
| this mechanism to present multiple resource bundles in diverse languages as a single node in the files tree. |
| |
| However, this ability to represent multiple files with a single DataObject is strongly discouraged for new code and will probably eventually be deprecated - it has serious negative implications for scalability. |
| |
| === Related tutorials |
| |
| * link:http://platform.netbeans.org/tutorials/60/nbm-copyfqn.html[NetBeans Java Language Infrastructure Tutorial] |
| * link:http://platform.netbeans.org/tutorials/nbm-filetype.html[File Type Integration Tutorial] |
| |
| === Apache Migration Information |
| |
| The content in this page was kindly donated by Oracle Corp. to the |
| Apache Software Foundation. |
| |
| This page was exported from link:http://wiki.netbeans.org/DevFaqDataObject[http://wiki.netbeans.org/DevFaqDataObject] , |
| that was last modified by NetBeans user Geertjan |
| on 2012-01-16T22:44:07Z. |
| |
| |
| *NOTE:* This document was automatically converted to the AsciiDoc format on 2018-02-07, and needs to be reviewed. |