Introduction

Eclipse FieldViewer is a structured viewer component that displays data entry fields for model objects in a user defined, form based layout.

Details

Eclipse FieldViewer is similar to the TableViewer component from JFace. It separates the model from viewers in a similar way using Content- and Labelproviders to bind the data to the fields of the viewer. A Fieldviewer can display an array of similar elements. Unlike a tableviewer only a single element is shown at a time. The layout of the fields is not predefined as in a tableviewer.

This widget can be used in software using other JFace components (eg RCP applications).

see the screenshots for more details.

Features

interface similar to that of a JFace-TableViewer()
ContentProvider(), LabelProvider() and Font-/ColorProvider()
fields can display text and/or image
ViewerSorter() and ViewerFilter()
semi-automatic layout for simple requirements
fully configurable layout of fields if necessary
editable fields using standard CellEditors

Motivation

Unlike a table viewer the Eclipse Fieldviewer is not a widget that has very unique features by itself. An experienced programmer can easily create the fields from scratch or use a tool for this task.

An Eclipse Fieldviewer widget is nice if you have to display data from a database where the user decides which element to display. It is also very well suited if you combine a Tableviewer()/TreeViewer() with a FieldViewer() and the user can decide how he wants the data displayed. Editable fields in these widgets use CellEditors to change the contents of the underlying model so the corresponding code can be reused and is not specifically tied to a single field.