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JavaTM 2 Platform Standard Ed. 5.0 |
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java.lang.Objectjava.beans.EventHandler
public class EventHandler
The EventHandler class provides
support for dynamically generating event listeners whose methods
execute a simple statement involving an incoming event object
and a target object.
The EventHandler class is intended to be used by interactive tools, such as
application builders, that allow developers to make connections between
beans. Typically connections are made from a user interface bean
(the event source)
to an application logic bean (the target). The most effective
connections of this kind isolate the application logic from the user
interface. For example, the EventHandler for a
connection from a JCheckBox to a method
that accepts a boolean value can deal with extracting the state
of the check box and passing it directly to the method so that
the method is isolated from the user interface layer.
Inner classes are another, more general way to handle events from
user interfaces. The EventHandler class
handles only a subset of what is possible using inner
classes. However, EventHandler works better
with the long-term persistence scheme than inner classes.
Also, using EventHandler in large applications in
which the same interface is implemented many times can
reduce the disk and memory footprint of the application.
The reason that listeners created with EventHandler
have such a small
footprint is that the Proxy class, on which
the EventHandler relies, shares implementations
of identical
interfaces. For example, if you use
the EventHandler create methods to make
all the ActionListeners in an application,
all the action listeners will be instances of a single class
(one created by the Proxy class).
In general, listeners based on
the Proxy class require one listener class
to be created per listener type (interface),
whereas the inner class
approach requires one class to be created per listener
(object that implements the interface).
You don't generally deal directly with EventHandler
instances.
Instead, you use one of the EventHandler
create methods to create
an object that implements a given listener interface.
This listener object uses an EventHandler object
behind the scenes to encapsulate information about the
event, the object to be sent a message when the event occurs,
the message (method) to be sent, and any argument
to the method.
The following section gives examples of how to create listener
objects using the create methods.
EventHandler is to install
a listener that calls a method on the target object with no arguments.
In the following example we create an ActionListener
that invokes the toFront method on an instance
of javax.swing.JFrame.
myButton.addActionListener(
(ActionListener)EventHandler.create(ActionListener.class, frame, "toFront"));
When myButton is pressed, the statement
frame.toFront() will be executed. One could get
the same effect, with some additional compile-time type safety,
by defining a new implementation of the ActionListener
interface and adding an instance of it to the button:
//Equivalent code using an inner class instead of EventHandler.
myButton.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
frame.toFront();
}
});
The next simplest use of EventHandler is
to extract a property value from the first argument
of the method in the listener interface (typically an event object)
and use it to set the value of a property in the target object.
In the following example we create an ActionListener that
sets the nextFocusableComponent property of the target
object to the value of the "source" property of the event.
This would correspond to the following inner class implementation:EventHandler.create(ActionListener.class, target, "nextFocusableComponent", "source")
//Equivalent code using an inner class instead of EventHandler.
new ActionListener() {
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
button.setNextFocusableComponent((Component)e.getSource());
}
}
Probably the most common use of EventHandler
is to extract a property value from the
source of the event object and set this value as
the value of a property of the target object.
In the following example we create an ActionListener that
sets the "label" property of the target
object to the value of the "text" property of the
source (the value of the "source" property) of the event.
This would correspond to the following inner class implementation:EventHandler.create(ActionListener.class, button, "label", "source.text")
//Equivalent code using an inner class instead of EventHandler.
new ActionListener {
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
button.setLabel(((JTextField)e.getSource()).getText());
}
}
The event property may be be "qualified" with an arbitrary number
of property prefixes delimited with the "." character. The "qualifying"
names that appear before the "." characters are taken as the names of
properties that should be applied, left-most first, to
the event object.
For example, the following action listener
might be written as the following inner class (assuming all the properties had canonical getter methods and returned the appropriate types):EventHandler.create(ActionListener.class, target, "a", "b.c.d")
//Equivalent code using an inner class instead of EventHandler.
new ActionListener {
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
target.setA(e.getB().getC().isD());
}
}
Proxy,
EventObject| Constructor Summary | |
|---|---|
EventHandler(Object target,
String action,
String eventPropertyName,
String listenerMethodName)
Creates a new EventHandler object;
you generally use one of the create methods
instead of invoking this constructor directly. |
|
| Method Summary | ||
|---|---|---|
static
|
create(Class<T> listenerInterface,
Object target,
String action)
Creates an implementation of listenerInterface in which
all of the methods in the listener interface apply
the handler's action to the target. |
|
static
|
create(Class<T> listenerInterface,
Object target,
String action,
String eventPropertyName)
Creates an implementation of listenerInterface in which
all of the methods pass the value of the event
expression, eventPropertyName, to the final method in the
statement, action, which is applied to the target. |
|
static
|
create(Class<T> listenerInterface,
Object target,
String action,
String eventPropertyName,
String listenerMethodName)
Creates an implementation of listenerInterface in which
the method named listenerMethodName
passes the value of the event expression, eventPropertyName,
to the final method in the statement, action, which
is applied to the target. |
|
String |
getAction()
Returns the name of the target's writable property that this event handler will set, or the name of the method that this event handler will invoke on the target. |
|
String |
getEventPropertyName()
Returns the property of the event that should be used in the action applied to the target. |
|
String |
getListenerMethodName()
Returns the name of the method that will trigger the action. |
|
Object |
getTarget()
Returns the object to which this event handler will send a message. |
|
Object |
invoke(Object proxy,
Method method,
Object[] arguments)
Extract the appropriate property value from the event and pass it to the action associated with this EventHandler. |
|
| Methods inherited from class java.lang.Object |
|---|
clone, equals, finalize, getClass, hashCode, notify, notifyAll, toString, wait, wait, wait |
| Constructor Detail |
|---|
public EventHandler(Object target,
String action,
String eventPropertyName,
String listenerMethodName)
EventHandler object;
you generally use one of the create methods
instead of invoking this constructor directly.
target - the object that will perform the actionaction - the (possibly qualified) name of a writable property or method on the targeteventPropertyName - the (possibly qualified) name of a readable property of the incoming eventlistenerMethodName - the name of the method in the listener interface that should trigger the actionEventHandler,
create(Class, Object, String, String, String),
getTarget(),
getAction(),
getEventPropertyName(),
getListenerMethodName()| Method Detail |
|---|
public Object getTarget()
EventHandler(Object, String, String, String)public String getAction()
EventHandler(Object, String, String, String)public String getEventPropertyName()
EventHandler(Object, String, String, String)public String getListenerMethodName()
null signifies that all methods in the
listener interface trigger the action.
EventHandler(Object, String, String, String)
public Object invoke(Object proxy,
Method method,
Object[] arguments)
EventHandler.
invoke in interface InvocationHandlerproxy - the proxy objectmethod - the method in the listener interfacearguments - an array of objects containing the values of the
arguments passed in the method invocation on the proxy instance,
or null if interface method takes no arguments.
Arguments of primitive types are wrapped in instances of the
appropriate primitive wrapper class, such as
java.lang.Integer or java.lang.Boolean.
EventHandler
public static <T> T create(Class<T> listenerInterface,
Object target,
String action)
listenerInterface in which
all of the methods in the listener interface apply
the handler's action to the target. This
method is implemented by calling the other, more general,
implementation of the create method with both
the eventPropertyName and the listenerMethodName
taking the value null.
To create an ActionListener that shows a
JDialog with dialog.show(),
one can write:
EventHandler.create(ActionListener.class, dialog, "show")
listenerInterface - the listener interface to create a proxy fortarget - the object that will perform the actionaction - the name of a writable property or method on the target
listenerInterfacecreate(Class, Object, String, String)
public static <T> T create(Class<T> listenerInterface,
Object target,
String action,
String eventPropertyName)
listenerInterface in which
all of the methods pass the value of the event
expression, eventPropertyName, to the final method in the
statement, action, which is applied to the target.
This method is implemented by calling the
more general, implementation of the create method with
the listenerMethodName taking the value null.
To create an ActionListener that sets the
the text of a JLabel to the text value of
the JTextField source of the incoming event,
you can use the following code:
This is equivalent to the following code:EventHandler.create(ActionListener.class, label, "text", "source.text");
//Equivalent code using an inner class instead of EventHandler. label.setText((JTextField(event.getSource())).getText())
listenerInterface - the listener interface to create a proxy fortarget - the object that will perform the actionaction - the name of a writable property or method on the targeteventPropertyName - the (possibly qualified) name of a readable property of the incoming event
listenerInterfacecreate(Class, Object, String, String, String)
public static <T> T create(Class<T> listenerInterface,
Object target,
String action,
String eventPropertyName,
String listenerMethodName)
listenerInterface in which
the method named listenerMethodName
passes the value of the event expression, eventPropertyName,
to the final method in the statement, action, which
is applied to the target. All of the other listener
methods do nothing.
If the eventPropertyName is null the
implementation calls a method with the name specified
in action that takes an EventObject
or a no-argument method with the same name if a method
accepting an EventObject is not defined.
If the listenerMethodName is null
all methods in the interface trigger the action to be
executed on the target.
For example, to create a MouseListener that sets the target
object's origin property to the incoming MouseEvent's
location (that's the value of mouseEvent.getPoint()) each
time a mouse button is pressed, one would write:
This is comparable to writing aEventHandler.create(MouseListener.class, "mousePressed", target, "origin", "point");
MouseListener in which all
of the methods except mousePressed are no-ops:
//Equivalent code using an inner class instead of EventHandler.
new MouseAdapter() {
public void mousePressed(MouseEvent e) {
target.setOrigin(e.getPoint());
}
}
listenerInterface - the listener interface to create a proxy fortarget - the object that will perform the actionaction - the name of a writable property or method on the targeteventPropertyName - the (possibly qualified) name of a readable property of the incoming eventlistenerMethodName - the name of the method in the listener interface that should trigger the action
listenerInterfaceEventHandler
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JavaTM 2 Platform Standard Ed. 5.0 |
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Copyright 2004 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Use is subject to license terms. Also see the documentation redistribution policy.