Method for visual manipulations of all kinds of programming objects

• US 20140223413A1
• Filed: 02/04/2013
• Published: 08/07/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 02/04/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: David Wei Ge
• Original Assignee: David Wei Ge
• Inventors: Ge, David Wei
• Granted Patent: US 8,930,891 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/109
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/34 Graphical or visual programming

Abstract

A method of enabling an Integrated Development Environment to visually manipulate any software objects, not just specifically designed object, comprises the steps of using a design-time software class to represent properties, methods, events, constructor, constructor parameters and type parameters of programming entities in an IDE, using a name-type dictionary to add any software types to a toolbox, using action-event assignments for codeless visual programming.

Claims

1. A method for creating a process of visual manipulations of objects of all kinds of software class or types (hereafter referred to as types) in an Integrated Development Environment (the IDE), said process includes adding any kinds of types to a toolbox, including types not derived from a specific class, not implementing specific interfaces, generic types and types without parameter-less constructors, said process includes design-time object creation from said toolbox, said process prepares objects so that said IDE may visually manipulate objects of any kinds of types, including types not derived from a specific class, not implementing specific interfaces, generic types and types without parameter-less constructors.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising a component (hereafter referred to as XClass), XClass is designed to meets all the requirements for it to be able to be visually manipulated and added to a toolbox by a state-of-art IDE, XClass represents an object being programmed, XClass includes information for the type of said object (hereafter referred to as “

object-type”

), the constructor of said object, the values (hereafter referred to as “

object-property-values”

) as results of programming;

“

object-property-values”

include values for the properties of “

object-type”

, the constructor, values for the constructor parameters, and values of type parameters if “

object-type”

is a generic type.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising of a process of adding new toolbox items:

the IDE maintains a dictionary of types, said dictionary (hereafter referred to as type-map) uses string as key, to add a new toolbox item for a type to the toolbox, the IDE adds said type to type-map by generating an unique key based on the name of said type, the IDE creates a new toolbox item using type XClass, said new toolbox item uses said key as its display text.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising of a process of creating object instance by selecting a toolbox item:

a user selects a toolbox item for creating an object instance in programming, an XClass object instance is created, the IDE locates a type from said type-map using the display text from the selected toolbox item as the dictionary key, the located type is passed to said XClass object instance as its “

object-type”

, if the located type is a generic type definition then the IDE shows a type-selection dialogue box for the user to specify types for type parameters, if the located type has more than one constructor then the IDE shows all the constructors for the user to select one constructor and its constructor-parameters, if the located type has only one constructor with one or more parameters then the IDE allows the user to specify constructor-parameters.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising of a process of forming a list of design time visually-manipulated properties of an XClass object instance by the properties of the “

object-type”

of said XClass object instance, the type parameters, the constructor and constructor parameters.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising of a process of design time object property setting:

a user selects an XClass object instance in the IDE, the IDE shows the list of design time properties of said XClass object instance in a visual editor, such as a Property Grid, to let the user visually view and edit properties, the property values the user entered through the visual editing are stored in “

object-property-values”

of said XClass object instance, the IDE saves “

object-property-values”

to computer data storage when saving the programming and loads “

object-property-values”

from said storage when loading the programming.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising of a process of design time object method selection:

a user selects an XClass object instance in the IDE, the IDE presents the methods of “

object-type”

of said XClass, the user makes a selection from said methods.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising of a process of design time object event selection:

a user selects an XClass object instance in the IDE, the IDE presents the events of “

object-type”

of said XClass, the user makes a selection from said events.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising of a process of design time object property selection:

a user selects an XClass object instance in the IDE, the IDE presents the “

design time visually-manipulated properties”

of said XClass as defined in claim 5, the user makes a selection from said properties.

10. A method for creating a process of visual and codeless event handling in an Integrated Development Environment (the IDE), said process includes visual event selection using the process of claim 8 to select an event to be handled;

said event handling is formed by a set of object instances and developed by setting properties of said object instances.

11. The method of claim 10 further comprising a type (hereafter referred to as Action), an Action may have a Condition as its member for indicating under which condition the action can be executed, an Action has an Action-method as its member indicating the operation to be carried out, an Action may have additional properties for providing parameter values required by said Action-method, an Action may have a return value indicating where to save the method return value.

12. The Action-method of the Action type of claim 11 can be an instance method of an object or a static method of a type, said Action has a property for each method parameter, at compiling time said Action is compiled into method-invocation code using the specified method, return value, and method-parameters.

13. The Action-method of the Action type of claim 11 can be an instance property of an object or a static property of a type, said Action has a “

value”

property for providing value;

at compiling time said Action is compiled into property-setting code, the property to set is the property represented by the Action-method, the “

value”

property of the Action is the value passed to the property.

14. The Action-method of the Action type of claim 11 can be an instance event of an object or a static event of a type, said Action has a property for each event parameter, at compiling time said Action is compiled into event-firing code using the specified event and event-parameters.

15. The method of claim 10 and claim 11 further comprising a process of visual action creation, said action creation process includes an action method selection process, said action method selection process can be the method selection process of claim 7, selected method becomes the action method, the action of claim 11 becomes a method-invoking action, the parameters becomes part of properties of the action;

said action method selection process can be the event selection process of claim 8, selected event becomes the action method, the action of claim 11 becomes an event-firing action, the event parameters become part of properties of the action;

said action method selection process can be the property selection process of claim 9, but the property list only contains runtime writable properties, the selected property becomes the action method, the action of claim 11 becomes a property-setting action, a property is added to the action for specifying value to be set to the selected property.