Method for seamlessly crossing GUI toolkit boundaries

• US 20060236268A1
• Filed: 04/19/2005
• Published: 10/19/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 04/19/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Feigenbaum, Barry Alan
• Granted Patent: US 7,614,005 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/853
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4488 Object-oriented
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/451 Execution arrangements for user interfaces

Abstract

A method, computer program product, and data processing system for facilitating the traversal of a hierarchy of GUI components containing components and/or containers from disparate GUI toolkits is disclosed. In a preferred embodiment, auxiliary associative data structures relating parent components in one toolkit to children in another toolkit are defined. When examining a component to determine if it has children, an appropriate associative data structure is consulted to determine if that component has a child from a disparate toolkit. In accordance with this preferred embodiment, additional associative data structures are defined, which also record the reverse “child-parent” relationship, so as to allow the GUI component tree to be traversed in both directions.

Claims

1. A process for operating a data processing system, comprising:

providing a parent object of a first type;

generating a child object of a second type, wherein the second type is such that the parent object is incapable of recognizing a relationship between the parent object and the child object; and

storing the relationship between the parent object and the child object in a data structure that is external to the parent object and the child object.

2. The process of claim 1,

wherein the parent object is a parent graphical user interface container object in a first graphical user interface toolkit,

wherein the child object is a child graphical user interface component object in a second graphical user interface toolkit, and

wherein the data structure is an associative data structure.

3. The process of claim 2, further comprising:

determining if the parent graphical user interface container object is associated with one or more children in the second graphical user interface toolkit.

4. The process of claim 3, wherein said determining includes searching for said relationship in the associative data structure.

5. The process of claim 4, further comprising:

determining if the parent graphical user interface container object is associated with one or more children in the first graphical user interface toolkit by executing a method associated with the parent graphical user interface container object.

6. The process of claim 2, wherein said relationship is a mapping from parent to child and the method further comprises:

storing a second relationship in a second associative data structure, wherein the second relationship is a mapping from child to parent.

7. The process of claim 2, wherein the first graphical user interface toolkit and the second graphical user interface toolkit define classes in an object-oriented programming language.

8. The process of claim 7, wherein the first graphical user interface toolkit is one of Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT) and Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) and the second graphical user interface toolkit is another of Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT) and Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT).

9. A computer program product in a computer readable medium comprising functional descriptive material that, when executed by a computer, causes the computer to perform actions that include:

providing a parent graphical user interface container object in a first graphical user interface toolkit;

generating a child graphical user interface component object in a second graphical user interface toolkit; and

storing a relationship between the parent graphical user interface container object and the child graphical user interface component object in an associative data structure.

10. The computer program product of claim 9, comprising additional functional descriptive material that, when executed by the computer, causes the computer to perform actions of:

determining if the parent graphical user interface container object is associated with one or more children in the second graphical user interface toolkit.

11. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein said determining includes searching for said relationship in the associative data structure.

12. The computer program product of claim 11, comprising additional functional descriptive material that, when executed by the computer, causes the computer to perform actions of:

determining if the parent graphical user interface container object is associated with one or more children in the first graphical user interface toolkit by executing a computer program product associated with the parent graphical user interface container object.

13. The computer program product of claim 9, wherein said relationship is a mapping from parent to child and the computer program product comprises additional functional descriptive material that, when executed by the computer, causes the computer to perform actions of:

storing a second relationship in a second associative data structure, wherein the second relationship is a mapping from child to parent.

14. The computer program product of claim 9, wherein the first graphical user interface toolkit and the second graphical user interface toolkit define classes in an object-oriented programming language.

15. The computer program product of claim 14, wherein the first graphical user interface toolkit is one of Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT) and Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) and the second graphical user interface toolkit is another of Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT) and Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT).

16. A data processing system comprising:

at least one processor;

at least one data store accessible to the at least one processor; and

a set of instructions in the at least one data store, wherein the at least one processor executes the set of instructions to perform actions of;

providing a parent graphical user interface container object in a first graphical user interface toolkit;

generating a child graphical user interface component object in a second graphical user interface toolkit; and

storing a relationship between the parent graphical user interface container object and the child graphical user interface component object in an associative data structure.

17. The data processing system of claim 16, wherein the at least one processor executes the set of instructions to perform additional action(s) of:

determining if the parent graphical user interface container object is associated with one or more children in the second graphical user interface toolkit.

18. The data processing system of claim 17, wherein said determining includes searching for said relationship in the associative data structure.

19. The data processing system of claim 18, wherein the at least one processor executes the set of instructions to perform additional action(s) of:

determining if the parent graphical user interface container object is associated with one or more children in the first graphical user interface toolkit by executing a data processing system associated with the parent graphical user interface container object.

20. The data processing system of claim 16, wherein said relationship is a mapping from parent to child and the data processing system further comprises:

storing a second relationship in a second associative data structure, wherein the second relationship is a mapping from child to parent.