Databinding to container of unknown type

Question

I have a simple EMF model of the following type:

EClass FooGroup {
    EString name;
    @Properties(containment=true, upper=-1)
    List<Node> nodes;
}
EClass BarGroup {
    EString name;
    @Properties(containment=true, upper=-1)
    List<Node> nodes;
}
EClass Node {
    EString name;
}

I want to show all names of the nodes in a simple TableViewer, together with the name of their parent group. Unfortunately, eContainer() is an operation and not a feature. This means that I can not use the JFace Databinding framework to link this property to the GUI.

How can I solve this problem? Do I create a derived feature? Are there any tricks?

Answer 1

I can't think of a way to use the eContainer in EMF-databinding, but it wouldn't be so hard to add a designated parent-reference to a node, and to update it programmatically whenever the eContainer changes.

Another solution is to add a parent and then change the generated code:

/*
 * @generated NOT
 */
public Group getParent() {
    if (eContainer() instanceof Group) {
        return (Group) eContainer();
    }
    return null;
}

Then you could use a FeaturePath to get the EMFProperty like this:

    IEMFProperty groupNameProperty = EMFProperties.value(
      FeaturePath.fromList(
        ModelPackage.Literals.NODE__PARENT,
        ModelPackage.Literals.GROUP__NAME
      )
    );