Best practise for data binding a list in Eclipse RCP application

Question

I am having trouble understanding the databinding in my Eclipse RCP application. I just can't figure out how it's supposed to work.. Here's what I want to do I have a View where a list of texts should be displayed. The texts are "stored" in a simple `List` which is provided via a singleton (for demonstration purpose only ;)). So whoever uses the `ListProvider` will get the list of texts. When the list changes I want my View to automatically update the table contents. Here's what I've done so far My List provider is an `Observable` that will notify observers when the list changes. In my view I create an Observer to watch the list provider and when the observer is notified I refresh my view. Code for the `ListProvider`: ``` public class ListProvider extends Observable { private Stack hist; private static ListProvider instance; // Singleton implementation public static ListProvidergetInstance() { if (null == instance) { instance = new ListProvider } return instance; } pub…

Accepted Answer

I recommend you reading JFace Databinding and make use of `ViewerSupport`, `ObservableListContentProvider` and `BeanProperties` to simplfy the job.

You can also see a working example JFace Databinding Snippet: Model to TableViewer binding for a reference, where the binding is done at last with the help of `ViewerSupport`:

```
(...)
TableViewer peopleViewer = new TableViewer(committers);
ViewerSupport.bind(peopleViewer, new WritableList(viewModel.getPeople(),
     Person.class), BeanProperties.value(Person.class, "name"));
```

With those helpers you won't need to implement the `Observer` for your list, and if you want your viewer to update its labels when data is modified take a look in the same example to `PropertyChangeSupport`, which allows you to refresh the viewer on every change on any element of the list that you notify through it. It's important that you use `BeanProperties` for the binding.

Best practise for data binding a list in Eclipse RCP application

Solution

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