Named configurations

In some cases it can be useful to specify a named configuration for a Plugin.

This can be useful if you want to share a configuration between several Plugins. In that case you will have only one set of properties associated with a configuration name, and you can refer to this same configuration for more than one Plugin.

Defining configurations for a Plugin

The MDIPluginConfig manifest property allows to specify the configuration or configurations associated with the Plugin. For example:

   MDIPluginClass: my.plugin.MyPluginClass
   MDIPluginConfig: myConfig

It is also possible to define more than one configuration for a Plugin (configurations must be separated by a semicolon). For example:

   MDIPluginClass: my.plugin.MyPluginClass
   MDIPluginConfig: myConfig;myConfig2

Accessing configuration properties for a named configuration

It is better to access configuration properties by their names (for setting or getting their values) for a name configuration.

Deserializing and serializing a named configuration

There are two ways to deserialize and serialize a named configuration:

• If you did not access properties by their names, you must use the getConfiguration and putConfiguration methods with the configuration name
• Else if you access properties by their names, you won't need to implement these methods, because the framework will do it for you

Without accessing configuration properties by name

The Configuration associated with the Plugin can be deserialized or serialized for each named configuration associated by the methods used for the configuration:

• The NamedConfiguration.getConfiguration(Preferences pref, File dir, String config) method, called when serializing the configuration. It is expected that the Configuration will use the various put methods in the Preferences class for each named configuration in the Plugin
• The NamedConfiguration.putConfiguration(Preferences pref, File dir, String config) method, called when serializing the configuration. It is expected that the Configuration will use the various get methods in the Preferences class for each named configuration in the Plugin