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gwtuibinder

passing an object to the constructor of a widget defined in uibinder


I'm trying to pass my app's EventBus to a widget declared in a UiBinder via its constructor. I'm using the @UiConstructor annotation to mark a constructor that accepts the EventBus, but I don't know how to actually reference the object from my ui.xml code.

That is, I need something like

WidgetThatNeedsAnEventBus.java

public class WidgetThatNeedsAnEventBus extends Composite
{
    private EventBus eventBus;

    @UiConstructor
    public WidgetThatNeedsAnEventBus(EventBus eventBus)
    {
        this.eventBus = eventBus;
    }
}

TheUiBinderThatWillDeclareAWTNAEB.ui.xml

<g:HTMLPanel>
    <c:WidgetThatNeedsAnEventBus eventBus=_I_need_some_way_to_specify_my_apps_event_bus_ />
</g:HTMLPanel>

I have no problem passing a static value to the WidgetThatNeedsAnEventBus, and I can use a factory method to create a new EventBus object. But what I need is to pass my app's already-existing EventBus.

Is there a way to refer to already-existing objects in a UiBinder?


Solution

  • My eventual solution was to use @UiField(provided=true) on the widget I needed to initialize with a variable.

    Then, I just constructed the widget myself in Java, before calling initWidget on the parent.

    For example:

    public class ParentWidget extends Composite
    {
        @UiField(provided=true)
        protected ChildWidget child;
    
        public ParentWidget(Object theObjectIWantToPass)
        {
            child = new ChildWidget(theObjectIWantToPass);  //_before_ initWidget
            initWidget(uiBinder.create(this));
    
            //proceed with normal initialization!
        }
    }