Description Cagatay Kavukcuoglu 2001-11-08 17:02:07 EST

In Eclipse, editor inputs are used to represent things that can be opened in an 
editor. However, there is not a well defined, general way of creating an editor 
input instance. As a result, it is not possible write plugins capable of 
opening any type of "input" in an editor programmatically. Most visibly, it is 
not possible to provide a generic "open selection in an editor" functionality 
without resorting to plugin specific API's - see 
org.eclipse.jdt.ui.JavaUI.openInEditor(IJavaElement). It would be better if any 
IAdaptable instance was able to provide a "IEditorInputProvider" instance using 
the adapter mechanism, which would in turn be used to create a new editor 
input. Here is some possible code:

public interface IEditorInputProvider {
    IEditorInput createEditorInput(Object obj);
    String getDefaultEditorId();
}

public class MyInputProvider implements IEditorInputProvider {
  IEditorInput createEditorInput(Object obj) {
      if (!(item instanceof MyItem))
          return;
      return new MyItemInput((MyItem) item);
  }
  
  String getDefaultEditorId() {
      return "my.editor.id";
  }
  

Then, when you have a selection,

IStructuredSelection selection = ...;
IAdaptable element = (IAdaptable) selection.getFirstElement();
IEditorInputProvider provider = (IEditorInputProvider) element.getAdapter(
    IEditorInputProvider.class);
    
IWorkbenchPage page = ...; // get the active page
page.openInEditor(provider.createEditorInput(element), 
provider.getDefaultEditorId());

I hope this makes sense...