Property Pages

Identifier: org.eclipse.ui.propertyPages

Description: This extension point is used to add additional property page for objects of a given type.  Once defined, these property pages will appear in the Properties Dialog for objects of that type.

A property page is a user friendly way to interact with the properties of an object.  Unlike the Properties view, which restricts the space available for editing an object property, a property page may benefit from the freedom to define larger, more complex controls with labels, icons, etc.  Properties which logically go together may also be clustered in a page, rather than scattered in the property sheet. However, in most applications it will be appropriate to expose some properties of an object via the property sheet and some via the property pages.

Property pages are shown in a dialog box that is normally visible when the "Properties" menu item is selected on a pop-up menu for an object. In addition to the object class, the name filter can optionally be supplied to register property pages only for specific object types.

If these filtering mechanisms are inadequate a property page may use the filter mechanism.  In this case the attributes of the target object are described in a series of key value pairs.  The attributes which apply to the selection are type specific and beyond the domain of the workbench itself, so the workbench will delegate filtering at this level to the actual selection.

Configuration Markup:

   <!ELEMENT page (filter)*>
   <!ATTLIST page
      id           CDATA         #REQUIRED
      name         CDATA         #REQUIRED
      icon         CDATA         #IMPLIED
      objectClass  CDATA         #REQUIRED
      class        CDATA         #REQUIRED
      nameFilter   CDATA         #IMPLIED
      adaptable    (true|false)  #IMPLIED
   >

   <!ELEMENT filter EMPTY>
   <!ATTLIST filter
      name       CDATA #REQUIRED
      value      CDATA #REQUIRED
   > Examples:

The following is an example of a property page extension:

   <extension point="org.eclipse.ui.propertyPages">
      <page
         id="com.xyz.projectPage"
         name="XYZ Java Properties"
         objectClass="org.eclipse.core.resources.IFile"
         class="com.xyz.ppages.JavaPropertyPage"
         nameFilter="*.java">
         <filter name="readOnly" value="true"/>
      </page>
    </extension>

API Information: The attribute class must specify a fully qualified name of a class that implements org.eclipse.ui.IWorkbenchPropertyPage.

Supplied Implementation: Some objects provided by the workbench may have property pages registered. Plug-ins are allowed to add more property pages for these objects. Property pages are not limited to workbench resources: all objects showing up in the workbench (even domain specific objects created by the plug-ins) may have property pages and other plug-ins are allowed to register property pages for them.

Copyright IBM Corporation and others 2000, 2002.