Populating Tables from Java Functions

[tpboyce]

I am working on a plugin that will ultimately have two tables. The data will be drawn from a custom Java class, so I can structure the returns however it works best. The table on the left will drive the data in the table on the right. There are a couple of things that I am running into that I am not readily finding answers to:

1) What is the expected return from my Java Application? Is it an array of strings? An array of objects? If it is an array of objects, what determines the text that is displayed in the table?

2) For my second table, depending upon the answer to 1, it would be possible to populate the table with all of the data and filter based upon the first table.

3) I am hoping that it is an array of objects becaust there could be multiple items in the list with the same text value. This will be rare, but is possible.

4) In the background, I may receive updates that might affect the data in the second table (which will likely be two dimensional).

[GKusnick]

A Table widget takes as input an array, List, Vector, or Map. In the first three cases the element type can be whatever you need it to be; in the Map case the Map's key set is used, and the element type is the key type.

The Table and TableComponent widgets just define the structure and layout of the table. The actual content displayed in each cell is determined by whatever chain of UI widgets you create below the TableComponent. It's up to you to interpret the element data (whatever it may be) and generate the appropriate text and/or graphics to display in the cell.

Filtering is not something the table does. It's something you do to your data before passing it in to the Table widget. Your job is to construct the array, List, or whatever to contain exactly the data you want display, in the order you want it. So any sorting or filtering happens first, before the table comes into play.

If your data changes, it's up to you to notice the change a trigger a display refresh. During the refresh, Sage will re-execute the code leading into the Table widget, thereby recalculating the array or List that feeds it.

The basic mechanics of tables are covered in the tutorial #12 in chapter 8 of the Studio manual. It's a good idea to work through those tutorials if you haven't already.

[tpboyce]

I have looked over the samples, and they still leave a gap. I am going to try some of my own code. The big question that I have is if I have an array of objects, how do I specify the name, and do I have easy access to other parameters?

[GKusnick]

The name of what? What other parameters?

Again, any text that appears on screen is the result of some chain of UI widgets you create. If your object has a field called Name, create an Action widget to call that field accessor, and pass the result to a Text widget. If your objects have other fields or methods whose values you want to display, write the appropriate code to call those methods and format the result as text.

If your question is about how to call arbitrary Java methods from widget code at all (never mind tables), see p. 151 of the Studio manual.