Eclipse Tips

In the earlier installments, we have seen adding our commands to menus and toolbars. But what about the standard menu items like Cut, Copy, Paste etc? We'll see how to add these to a context menu of the Sample View.

Create the Sample View through the PDE's Extension Point Wizard. In the SampleView class, notice these lines:


private void hookContextMenu() {

// rest of the code...
getSite().registerContextMenu(menuMgr, viewer);
}

private void fillContextMenu(IMenuManager manager) {

//rest of the code
manager.add(new Separator(IWorkbenchActionConstants.MB_ADDITIONS));
}

The first one registers this context menu, so that other plugins can contribute their commands to it. The second one adds a separator, which serves as a place holder/location where the contribution goes. So the SampleView is ready to accept the contributions, lets now contribute:

   <extension
point="org.eclipse.ui.menus">
<menuContribution
locationURI="popup:com.eclipse_tips.commands.part7.views.SampleView?after=additions">
<command commandId="org.eclipse.ui.edit.cut"/>
<command commandId="org.eclipse.ui.edit.copy"/>
<command commandId="org.eclipse.ui.edit.paste"/>
</menuContribution>
</extension>

The id for the context menu, is by default the View's id, and we add our contribution after the separator. We can add any command, either the Platform defined or our own. Result:


Now we have the menu items, images, shortcut keys everything in place (you ought to love the command framework :-)), except that the items are not enabled. Its because there is no handler for these commands for the given context. There are multiple ways to contribute the handler, since we are adding this to our view, lets use the activePartId variable:

   <extension
point="org.eclipse.ui.handlers">
<handler
class="com.eclipse_tips.commands.part7.handlers.CutHandler"
commandId="org.eclipse.ui.edit.cut">
<activeWhen>
<with
variable="activePartId">
<equals
value="com.eclipse_tips.commands.part7.views.SampleView">
</equals>
</with>
</activeWhen>
</handler>

Other commands also have similar handlers. Now:


There you go. In the similar way you can add all the standard commands to any menu/context menu you prefer. Just make sure that you have the handler for the commands with the right activeWhen & enabledWhen expression.

The standard command Ids can be found in the IWorkbenchCommandConstants class (available in 3.5)