Application

A MDIApplication is an interface which is the top-level element of the MDIFramework. It does not provide a UI by default but provides the following utilities:

• A Plugin framework
• A Configuration / Preferences framework
• An actions framework

The AbstractApplication is an abstract implementation which ease the creation of a application.

Application initialization

The constructor of the application allows to configure the content of the application, including:

• If it can manage Plugins
• If it serialize and deserialize its configuration
• For GUI applications, the application menu factory, its Status bar, its logger area, and its Splash Screen

Exiting of the application

The MDIApplication.disposeApplication() method is called when the application is disposed of (for example when closing the window, or explicitly exiting the application). You can override the method if you want to get rid of resources created at the application creation, for example:

   @Override
   public void disposeApplication() {
      // do something to get rid of used resources
      super.disposeApplication();
   }   

GUI applications

GUI applications are applications which manage the concept of "tabbed documents". They support several concepts which are not available on regular applications, such as:

• A Menu Factory: See Menu factory for more information
• A message area: See Message area for more information
• A Splash screen: See Adding a Splash screen for more information

A GUI application must implement the GUIApplication interface. There are two abstract GUI implementations for the Swing and JavaFX frameworks:

• The AbstractMDIApplication provide a GUI and allows to create a Swing Application
• The AbstractJFXApplication does not provide a GUI by default, but has no Swing dependencies and allows to create a JavaFX Application

Restarting an application

The LauncherConf.restart(MDIApplication appli) allows to restart the application. This method will call MDIApplication.disposeApplication() to exit.

Usage of plugins

A Plugin is a jar library which contain functionalities to use with the application. A Plugin has:

• A Manifest file, with specific MDIFramework properties
• A Plugin class which will be called by theapplication

Plugins can perform a lot of functionalities by themselves:

• Adding static menus
• Adding specific dynamic menus on specific type of content

There are no dependencies from the application to plugins. If you don't provide a Plugin, the main application will still work correctly.

Several methods allow to access plugins from the application allow to access the plugins if necessary.

Getting the reference directory of the application

The MDIApplication.getAppDir() will return the reference directory for the application. It will be used to serialize and deserialize the configuration for plugins.

By default the method will return the user directory bu it is possible to specify ecplictly this directory with the MDIApplication.setAppDir(File dir) method.

Setting the application ID

The MDIApplication.getApplicationID() method returns the ID of the aplication (by default this method returns null).

This will allow to choose the Plugin class depending on the application ID.

In the following example:

   MDIPluginClass: appli1;org.my.Plugin1;appli2;org.my.Plugin2

• If getApplicationID() returns "appli1", then the org.my.Plugin1 class will be loaded for the Plugin
• If getApplicationID() returns "appli2", then the org.my.Plugin2 class will be loaded for the Plugin