SWT: A Developer's Notebook

Creating a Working Combo List

Knowing how to create a Combo object and add items to it makes it easy to create a functional ComboExample class.

How do I do that?

Example 8-1 creates a Combo object with five items added to the list.

Example 8-1. A Combo example class

import org.eclipse.swt.SWT;
import org.eclipse.swt.graphics.Image;
import org.eclipse.swt.widgets.*;

public class ComboExample {
    Display d;
    Shell s;
    ComboExample( )    {
        d = new Display( );
        s = new Shell(d);
        s.setSize(250,250);
        s.setImage(new Image(d, "c:\\icons\\JavaCup.ico"));
        s.setText("A Combo Example");
        final Combo c = new Combo(s, SWT.READ_ONLY);
        c.setBounds(50, 50, 150, 65);
        String items[] = {"Item One", "Item Two", "Item Three", "Item Four", 
                                                "Item Five"};    
        c.setItems(items);
        s.open( );
        while(!s.isDisposed( )){
            if(!d.readAndDispatch( ))
                d.sleep( );
        }        
        d.dispose( );
    }
}

The setItems( ) method of adding items to the list is used here. The add( ) method could have been used just as easily, although with a net increase in the number of lines of code required.

Everything you learned about creating, sizing, positioning, and adding items to an instance of the List class applies to the Combo class as well, without change. In fact, if you compare this code to the code that created the initial ListExample class in the previous chapter, you see that they are identical. Creating an instance of ComboExample displays Figure 8-1.

Figure 8-1. A ...