The Interaction Manager
This is BulletProofs innovative and unique system for the visual lining of methods and parameters of components. Any component placed on the screen, visual or non-visual, Bean or custom, has a set of methods an parameters that allow it to act on other components to complete an application. In JDesignerPro you have the first system to do all of this coding simply by linking objects with mouse clicks.
To use the Interaction Manager, highlight a component in the Layout View tree and click the Interaction Manager button. The events you build for this component will end up in the first window to the left. To build events with other components, start by choosing an appropriate component and method under Add New Event.
The Add New Events window shows every other component that is currently on this project and exposes its methods in the Tree. It is up you to determine the correct method that matches the current components action event. For the details about the methods and their necessary parameters, please see the Java API documentation that comes with the JDK from Sun Microsystems, Inc. The JDK from JavaSoft, a Sun Microsystems business, is free and downloadable from their website at www.JavaSoft.com/.
The Local Methods are JDesignerPro-specific methods that expose the parameters for JDesignerPros built-in components. The API for these methods is found under the Application Builders API button, described below.
The Interaction Manager also exposes the parameters for the chosen method if any are required. These will appear automatically under the Parameters tab. Click on a parameter in this list and JDesignerPro will return the parameters from the components currently on the screen that make sense to use with the selected method. From that list on the right side choose a parameter.
The steps to building source using the Interaction Manager are illustrated below:
1. Once we have highlighted a component in the Layout View and clicked the Interaction Manager button, the screen appears similar to below. The left section is the Component Event Tree. The Right side is where the methods and parameters are chosen.
2. From the Add New Event tree, we select the method of the component we want to use. Then we drag it to the desired action element under the Component Event tree.
Once we have added a method to the Component Events tree, JDesignerPro automatically locates the parameters for that method and displays them in the Parameters tree. In the illustration below, String[] is the only parameter that the highlighted method uses.
Now we click on the parameter in the Parameters tree, in this case String[]. When we do this, JDesignerPro automatically searches the components that are currently on the screen and builds a list of the matching parameters to the right. We open this tree to locate the desired element to pass the method.
Once chosen, JDesignerPro will place the parameter in a tree in the Parameter list in the center. The source code is now complete for this interaction. If you need to add more parameters or wish to do so by hand, click on the Source tab to the right. Notice that the main line of the created source is under the Source tab.
To fill in additional parameters, in the Source window, highlight or enter some text you wish to add or replace. The parameters will appear in the right-hand portion of the Sopurce window. This is the Source Helper.
This Source Window is here for your conveneince. It is not the main Source Editor for looking at and adding methods to the entire application.
The Source window displays the source line created by linking the method with the parameters. You can change it how ever you want in this Source window. It will be updated in the main source for the project.
Note: in addition to these tutorials, you can learn by example by loading the modules included with JDesignerPro. Look in the JDesignerPro\Applications\Examples folder. Open these files as you would any JDesignerPro file, by using the Open button on the Application Builder screen. Once loaded you can look at the Interaction Manager to get a feel for how to put together similar screens of your own.