NetBeans Plugin Quick Start

Creating the Action

1. Right-click the project node and choose New > Action (if Action is not displayed, access it by choosing Other, then in the New File wizard under Categories, select Module Development). Click Next.
2. In the Action Type panel keep the default setting, which will let the IDE create an action that subclasses ActionListener, as shown below:
   
   
   
   Click Next.
3. In the GUI Registration panel, select File from the Category drop-down list. The Category drop-down list controls where an action is shown in the Keyboard Shortcuts editor in the IDE. Next, deselect Global Menu Item and select Global Toolbar Button. In the Toolbar drop-down list, select File, then in the Position drop-down list, select any position in the drop-down list, such as the one shown below:
   
   
   
   Click Next.

4. In the Name and Location panel, type GoogleAction as the Class Name and Google Action as the Display Name. Browse to an icon that has a dimension of 16x16 pixels. In fact, you will not use the icon—instead, you will display the JPanel Form that you create in the next section. However, the New Action wizard requires you to specify an icon. Therefore, the icon could be of any dimension, since you will not be using it. Click Finish.

   Note: GoogleAction.java is added to the org.myorg.googletoolbar package in the Projects window.

Creating the JPanel

In this section, you will create a JPanel which will be the toolbar that you will display as part of the application's main toolbar.

1. Right-click the project node and choose New > Other. Under Categories, select Swing GUI Forms. Under Projects, select JPanel Form. Click Next.
2. In the Name and Location panel, type GooglePanel as the Class Name and select the package from the drop-down list. Click Finish. GooglePanel.java is added to the package and is opened in the Design view in the Source Editor.
3. Place the cursor at the bottom right-hand corner of the JPanel, then select the JPanel and drag the cursor to resize it, so that its width and length resemble that of a toolbar, as shown below:
   
   
4. Drag a JTextField item and a JLabel item from the Palette (Ctrl+Shift+8) directly into the JPanel, then resize the JPanel and the other two items so that they fit snugly together. Finally, click the JLabel and change its text to Google:, then delete the default text in the JTextField. Your JPanel should now resemble the image shown below:
   
   
5. Make sure the Property Inspector is open (Window > Navigating > Inspector), then right-click the JTextField and choose Events > Key > keyTyped. This generates a jTextField1KeyTyped() method in the GooglePanel.java source code, which displays in the Source Editor, as shown below:
   
   
6. In the Source Editor, in the Source view of GooglePanel.java, fill out the jTextField1KeyTyped() method as follows (inserted text shown in bold):

       
   private void jTextField1KeyTyped(java.awt.event.KeyEvent evt) {
       int i = evt.getKeyChar();
       if (i==10){//The ENTER KEY
           // we display the google url.
           try{
               URLDisplayer.getDefault().showURL
                       (new URL("http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q="+jTextField1.getText()+"&btnG=Google+Search"));
           } catch (Exception eee){
               return;//nothing much to do
           }
       }
   }

If you need to, right-click in the Source Editor and choose Format (Alt+Shift+F).

Resolving Errors

Notice that one line of code is underlined in red, indicating errors. This is because required packages have not been imported yet. Place your cursor over the light bulb icon displayed in the column to the immediate left of the red line for URLDisplayer. A tooltip displays, indicating the reason for the error:

In order to solve this, you need to make the HtmlBrowser.URLDisplayer class, included in the org.openide.awt package, accessible to your project. To do so, perform the following steps:

1. Right-click the project node in the Projects window and choose Properties. In the Project Properties dialog that displays, select Libraries under the Categories heading. Then, under Module Dependencies, click the Add button. The Add Module Dependency Dialog displays.
2. In the filter text box displayed at the top of the Add Module Dependency Dialog, start typing URLDisplayer and notice that the selection of returned modules narrows until the only remaining listing is the UI Utilities API:
   
   
   
   Click OK, then click OK again to exit the Project Properties dialog.
3. Right-click in the Source Editor and choose Fix Imports (Alt+Shift+F). The Fix All Imports dialog displays, listing suggested paths for unrecognized classes:
   
   
   
   Click OK. The IDE creates the following import statements for GooglePanel.java:

   import java.net.URL;
   import org.openide.awt.HtmlBrowser.URLDisplayer;
               

   Also notice that all errors disappear from the Source Editor.

Implementing Presenter.Toolbar

Because the JPanel you just created is the actual component that will display the Google toolbar, you need to implement Presenter.Toolbar to display it in the toolbar. In GoogleAction.java, do the following:

1. Open GoogleAction.java and notice that it has this content:

       
   package org.myorg.googletoolbar;
   
   import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
   import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
   
   public final class GoogleAction implements ActionListener {
   
       public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
           // TODO implement action body
       }
       
   }

2. Change the signature so that Presenter.Toolbar is implemented too, because you want the action to be presented in the toolbar.

   package org.myorg.googletoolbar;
   
   import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
   import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
   
   public final class GoogleAction implements Presenter.Toolbar, ActionListener {
   
       Component comp  = new GooglePanel();
   
       @Override
       public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
           // TODO implement action body
       }
   
       @Override
       public Component getToolbarPresenter() {
           return comp;
       }
   
   }

3. Open the layer.xml file and you should see the following:

       
   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   <!DOCTYPE filesystem PUBLIC "-//NetBeans//DTD Filesystem 1.2//EN" "http://www.netbeans.org/dtds/filesystem-1_2.dtd">
   <filesystem>
       <folder name="Actions">
           <folder name="File">
               <file name="org-myorg-googletoolbar-GoogleAction.instance">
                   <attr name="SystemFileSystem.localizingBundle" stringvalue="org.myorg.googletoolbar.Bundle"/>
                   <attr name="delegate" newvalue="org.myorg.googletoolbar.GoogleAction"/>
                   <attr name="displayName" bundlevalue="org.myorg.googletoolbar.Bundle#CTL_GoogleAction"/>
                   <attr name="iconBase" stringvalue="org/myorg/googletoolbar/icon.png"/>
                   <attr name="instanceCreate" methodvalue="org.openide.awt.Actions.alwaysEnabled"/>
                   <attr name="noIconInMenu" stringvalue="false"/>
               </file>
           </folder>
       </folder>
       <folder name="Toolbars">
           <folder name="File">
               <file name="org-myorg-googletoolbar-GoogleAction.shadow">
                   <attr name="originalFile" stringvalue="Actions/File/org-myorg-googletoolbar-GoogleAction.instance"/>
                   <attr name="position" intvalue="0"/>
               </file>
           </folder>
       </folder>
   </filesystem>

   The content shown above was created by the New Action wizard. Delete the "instanceCreate" attribute because you do not want to create an instance of an Action class, in this case. After all, here you want a JPanel to appear there instead.

In this section, you have created a JPanel that will display a JTextField and a JLabel. When Enter is pressed in the JTextField, its content will be sent to a Google search. The HTML browser will open and you will see the result of the Google search. The action class is used to integrate the JPanel within the application's toolbar, as registered in the layer.xml file.