Quick Tips: Storing preferences and settings per user in a RCP application

Eclipse RCP applications store the prefrences and settings in the workspace. When a RCP application is exported, the workspace is opened within the application folder unless the workspace location is overridden. This will make every user who uses the application to use the same preferences. To enable the preferences and workbench state to be user specific, the default location of the workspace can be configured in the config.ini file as follows.

osgi.instance.area.default=@user.home/eclipseworkspace

Now the preferences and other dialog settings will be written in the user's own workspaces.

Quick Tip: Save and Restore the perspective layout

To restore the perspctive to the last modified state, eclipse stores the workbench state to a file called workbench.xml. To enable the save and restore layout, the IWorkbenchConfigurer must be set in the ApplicationWorkbenchAdvisor.

public void initialize(IWindowConfigurer configurer)
{
configurer.setSaveAndRestore(true);
}

Eclipse : Writing to the console in a RCP Application

When you want to add console message to the eclipse console view, there is no easiest way to do this. The sysout/syserr messages will go on the console where you have the application if you run it with -consoleLog option.

How do we show the messages on the console view eclipse provides. First of all we have to add the console view to the perspective. The console view is part of the org.eclipse.ui.console plugin, so add it to the dependencies if you dont have it already.

Now add the ConsoleView to the perspective in the createInitialLayout method ( the following snippet is written with the RCP Mail example )

public void createInitialLayout(IPageLayout layout) {
  String editorArea = layout.getEditorArea();
  layout.setEditorAreaVisible(false);

  layout.addStandaloneView(NavigationView.ID, false, IPageLayout.LEFT,
    0.25f, editorArea);
  IFolderLayout folder = layout.createFolder("messages", IPageLayout.TOP,
    0.5f, editorArea);
  folder.addPlaceholder(View.ID + ":*");
  folder.addView(View.ID);

  IFolderLayout consoleFolder = layout.createFolder("console",
    IPageLayout.BOTTOM, 0.65f, "messages");
  consoleFolder.addView(IConsoleConstants.ID_CONSOLE_VIEW);
  layout.getViewLayout(NavigationView.ID).setCloseable(false);
 }

Now if you run the application you can see the console view at the bottom of the Messages view of the RCP Mail application. But now there are no open consoles on the console view. Now let us take an example, whenever a Messages view is opened we want to write something to the console.

public class OpenViewAction extends Action {

 private final IWorkbenchWindow window;
 private int instanceNum = 0;
 private final String viewId;
 MessageConsole messageConsole;

 public OpenViewAction(IWorkbenchWindow window, String label, String viewId) {
  this.window = window;
  this.viewId = viewId;
  setText(label);
  // The id is used to refer to the action in a menu or toolbar
  setId(ICommandIds.CMD_OPEN);
  // Associate the action with a pre-defined command, to allow key
  // bindings.
  setActionDefinitionId(ICommandIds.CMD_OPEN);
  setImageDescriptor(com.blog.sample.Activator
    .getImageDescriptor("/icons/sample2.gif"));

 }

 public void run() {
  if (window != null) {
   try {
    int instance = instanceNum++;
    window.getActivePage().showView(viewId,
      Integer.toString(instance),
      IWorkbenchPage.VIEW_ACTIVATE);

    messageConsole = getMessageConsole();
    MessageConsoleStream msgConsoleStream = messageConsole
      .newMessageStream();

    ConsolePlugin.getDefault().getConsoleManager().addConsoles(
      new IConsole[] { messageConsole });

    msgConsoleStream.println(viewId + Integer.toString(instance));

   } catch (PartInitException e) {
    MessageDialog.openError(window.getShell(), "Error",
      "Error opening view:" + e.getMessage());
   }
  }
 }

 private MessageConsole getMessageConsole() {
  if (messageConsole == null) {
   messageConsole = new MessageConsole("RCPMail", null);
   ConsolePlugin.getDefault().getConsoleManager().addConsoles(
     new IConsole[] { messageConsole });
  }

  return messageConsole;
 }

}

Now every new view opened will write the ViewID to the RCPMail console we created.

Have fun!