How to build an application in Eclipse using visual beans

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Before building the application, set up the libraries the application will use. Create a new library containing the ArcGIS Engine Java Archive (JAR) files needed to get started. 

Before continuing on in this topic, now is a good time to update your Eclipse with a visual editor. Eclipse itself does not include a visual editor of its own, but there are a number of Eclipse plugin providers that enable you to visually build Java GUI applications such as the one we will build here. For the sake of this topic, we've chosen WindowBuilder. It is freely available for download at http://www.eclipse.org/windowbuilder/ . Make sure you have fully installed this plugin into your Eclipse IDE before moving to the next steps.

 

     3.  Set the properties of the new visual class. Change the name to EngineApp.

     4.  Click Finish. See the following screen shot:

5. Just below the code editing view, click the 'Design' tab. This will switch your view from code editing to visual design:

        

6. Create a new Palette category for the ArcObjects visual beans, so they appear available in the Palette window. In the Palette window, right click and select 'Add category. Give it the name 'ArcObjects'. A new empty folder/category will appear :
   

 

 

 

7. Right click on the ArcObjects category folder and choose 'Import jar…'. Browse to where the arcobjects.jar file is on your file system:
   

 

 

You will see a list of all the visual beans available in the arcobjects.jar. Check them all and click 'OK' to finish the import.

 

 

9. Now, your ArcObjects category should contain the visual beans used to visually build your Engine application:
   

 

Click TOCBean and click the West frame. The content pane automatically places the frame to the left side:

10. Type TOC in the Name dialog box and click OK. See the following screen shot:
    
    
11. Click MapBean from the palette and click the center portion of the frame.
12. Click ToolbarBean from the palette and click the North section. Name the North section ToolBar. See the following screen shot:
    

 

13. Building the simple application for the framework is complete. Now, the visual bean properties must be set to properly interact with each other. Click the ESRI TOCControl to make it active. In the Property list, click the 'Show advanced properties, and find the BuddyControl property. Click the '…' button in the Value column to show a list of the applicable values. The Map value entered in Step 11 for the MapBean in the application appears. Click Map to set the property. See the following screen shot:
    

14. The ToolBarBean needs the same property set. Activate the ESRI ToolBarControl and also set its BuddyControl property to Map. All the components are ready to interact with each other. The next step is to add data to the map and tools to the toolbar. 
15. Right-click the ESRI MapControl and click Customize. See the following screen shot:
    

Various properties for the map can be set, but at this point choose a map document to display. Click the open folder button and browse to a *.mxd file (ArcGIS/java/samples/data/mxds/usa.mxd). Click OK to close the dialog box. See the following screen shot:

16. Right-click the ESRI ToolBarControl and open its Customize dialog box.
17. Click the Items tab and click Add.
18. Scroll to the Map Navigation category (you can select different types of commands to be included on the toolbar). See the following screen shot:
    

 

19. In the preceding screen shot, you can double-click individual commands or a category to add them to the toolbar. You can also highlight a command and click the Add Command button to add it separately. For now, choose several items to add and click Close; all the items appear in the Java Property Editor (you can also remove added items). See the following screen shot:
    

20. Right-click an item that you want to remove and click Delete. You can also begin a toolbar group or show text instead of the icon on the toolbar. Leave the Image Only option selected to show the icons. See the following screen shot:
    

 

21. Click OK when you are finished setting up the toolbar.

Completing the code and initializing the ArcGIS Engine license

1. Switch to the code view. In several places, some red underlined code is visible with a small red x on the left panel. Eclipse is showing that this item needs attention and it can be resolved by clicking the red x. See the following screen shot:
   

 

2. Options to fix the code appear. Click Surround with try/catch to resolve the situation and to automatically insert the code. See the following screen shot:
   
   

 

Do this procedure for the TOC, toolbar, and map components where the red x appears.

 

3. The ArcGIS Engine application needs to be properly licensed. A shortcut is available to create this code. Right-click in the code editor and click ArcGIS, Insert License Code. See the following screen shot:
   

4. Select the ArcGIS Engine check box and click OK. See the following screen shot: 
   

This code creates a new method to initialize the ArcGIS license check for the ArcGIS Engine product code. For more information regarding licensing and its uses, see Licensing and deployments. 

5. After creating the license method, call it within the main method of the application before it uses any ArcObjects. In the default constructor, add the following code example:

initializeArcGISLicenses();

6. Initialize the visual beans in the main method. In the public static void main method, type the following code example: 

com.esri.arcgis.system.EngineInitializer.initializeVisualBeans();

EngineApp map = new EngineApp();
map.setVisible(true);

The application window appears with the specified toolbar and map items. See the following screen shot: