Edit Tool Example¶
This tutorial demonstrates how to make a simple custom edit tool. The tool will select features and change the geometry of the feature into a star.
Requirements for tutorial¶
- Installed eclipse and uDig SDK 1.1 - SDK Quickstart
- Completion of the Plugin tutorial - Tool Plugin Tutorial
What is a Edit Tool?¶
Edit tools are another sub-type of tools, however they do not (yet) have their own extension point. Instead they are extensions of the net.refractions.udig.project.ui.tool extension point. Because there are a large number of editing tools that can be created an many of them have similar functionality there is a little framework associated with edit tools development. The design and more detailed discussion of the edit tool framework can be found at Edit Tools
Tutorial¶
- Create a new Plugin called: net.refractions.udig.tutorials.tool.star
- Configure your new created plugin
- Open the Plug-in Development perspective.
- In the Package Explorer navigate to the plug-in created in the previous section. Open the plug-in manifest by navigating to the META-INF/MANIFEST.MF file under the root of the feature editor plug-in. Double click on the file to open the plug-in manifest editor.
- Open the plug-in dependencies by clicking on the Dependencies tab located at the bottom of the editor area.
- Click the Add button in the Required plugins column and add the following plugin:
- net.refractions.udig.project.ui,
- net.refractions.udig.ui
- At this point it is critical that you Save your work as the dependencies need to propagate into the project.
Import Resources Into Project
Define a New Extension
- Open the extensions page by clicking on the Extensions tab
- Click the Add button
- Select the net.refractions.udig.project.ui.tool extension point from the list.
- Click the Finish button.
- Enter the following Extention Details:
- ID: net.refractions.udig.tutorials.tool.star
- Name: Star Geometry Tool Example
Create a New Tool
- Right click on newly added extension, net.refractions.udig.project.ui.tool, and select New ‣ modalTool
- Replace the default data in the id field with net.refractions.udig.tutorials.tool.star.
- Enter a tool tip message into the tooltip field: Changes Geometry to Star
- Enter net.refractions.udig.tutorials.tool.move.StarTool into the class field.
- Enter icons/etool16/ into the icon field. (Or press the Browse button and locate the icon)
- Enter Move into the name field.
- Set onToolbar to true.
- Enter net.refractions.udig.tool.edit.create into the categoryId field. This ensures that the tool will be created in the create Tool category.