[news.eclipse.platform] Dispatching application-level events to Eclipse

[Fabio Mancinelli <fabio.mancinelli@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear all

I was thinking of a mechanism for dispatching application-level event to 
interested Eclipse parts using the Eclipse platform.

A scenario might be the following: an FTP application with an explorer 
that shows different FTP connections and their content.

For example, imagine that a user selects the "connect" command on one of 
the connection listed in the explorer and the connection is established.

At this point it would be good to reflect this fact in all the parts 
that displays information about that connection.

The idea is to dispatch a sort of "connection established" event with a 
reference to the connection that has been established. In this way the 
interested listeners could, in case, decorate the icon, write in bold 
the connection name, update connection information, etc. in order to 
reflect this state change.

This mechanism is a straightforward publish-subscribe pattern with event 
 providers and listener that can be implemented quite easily.

However I was wondering if there is already an infrastructure in the 
Eclipse framework that could accommodate this scenario.

The selection system might be a good candidate. When such an 
application-level event happens I might create a selection that contains 
an object that represents the application level event; something like that:

...getSelectionProvider().setSelection(new StructuredSelection(new 
ConnectionEstablishedEvent(ftpConnection)));

This selection change will be broadcasted to all the listeners that 
will, indirectly, receive also the application-level event

However, this might be an hack for something that could be achieved in a 
more elegant way using the Eclipse platform.

So the question is, does this elegant way exist?

Thank you.

Cheers,
Fabio