Hello World

This page will demonstrate a hello world application with Modern Docking.

At the end of this page you'll know how to:

create and register dockables
create and register root panels
dock programmatically

First we will create HelloWorld and MainFrame classes. HelloWorld will contain our main method and MainFrame will extend JFrame to provide the main frame for our application.

public class HelloWorld {
    public static class MainFrame extends JFrame {
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(() -> new MainFrame().setVisible(true));
    }
}

That will give us a very basic application to start working from.

Now we need to create a constructor that does the following:

sets a size
initializes Modern Docking
adds a RootDockingPanel
creates, registers and docks some dockables

First we set a size so that our JFrame shows up on screen in a reasonable way

setSize(400, 300);

Next step is to initialize the docking framework.

Docking.initialize(this);

This will initialize the docking framework with our MainFrame class as the Main Frame of the application. This also initializes internal components in the framework that are needed later.

Next, we create and add a RootDockingPanel. This can be further customized if you want to use a different layout or have other custom components surrounding the dockable area. For now, we're going to simple use a BorderLayout (the default JFrame layout manager) and let the root consume all the space.

RootDockingPanel root = new RootDockingPanel(this);
add(root, BorderLayout.CENTER);

This creates a new root and adds it to the JFrame. this is passed to tell the RootDockingPanel what Window it belongs to. This is used to register the panel with the docking framework and to create any toolbars required for pinning.

Next, we will create a dockable. This will involve creating a new JPanel that extends the Dockable interface. Most of the methods in the Dockable interface have default implementations and are not required to be implemented.

The following methods are required to be implemented: | Method | Description | | ------ | ----------- | | getPersistentID | A unique identifier for the dockable within the docking framework | | getTabText | The text to display on the titlebar and on a JTabbedPane tab, if docked into a tab group |

We will make a simple panel that takes text as the lone constructor argument and uses it as the persistentID and tab text.

static class DockingPanel extends JPanel implements Dockable {
    private final String text;

    public DockingPanel(String text) {
        this.text = text;

        Docking.registerDockable(this);
    }

    @Override
    public String getPersistentID() {
        return text;
    }

    @Override
    public String getTabText() {
        return text;
    }
}

Now that we've created a panel that implements Dockable we can start creating dockables in our constructor.

DockingPanel helloWorld = new DockingPanel("Hello World");

This will register the dockable with the docking framework. The persistentID will be used to uniquely identify the dockable throughout the framework. In more complicated applications we would call Docking.registerDockable from within the constructor of our panel, as shown below.

We can now dock the dockable. First, we can do this with the panel reference directly.

Docking.dock(helloWorld, this);

or, we can use the persistentID value:

Docking.dock("Hello World", this);

In both cases this again refers to our MainFrame, requesting that the framework dock our panel to this frame.

Now we have a complete sample that will create a JFrame with a dockable with the display text of "Hello World". Full sample is shown below:

public class HelloWorld {
    static class DockingPanel extends JPanel implements Dockable {
        private final String text;

        public DockingPanel(String text) {
            this.text = text;
            
            Docking.registerDockable(this);
        }
        
        @Override
        public String getPersistentID() {
            return text;
        }
        
        @Override
        public String getTabText() {
            return text;
        }
    }

    public static class MainFrame extends JFrame {
        public MainFrame() {
            setSize(400, 300);

            Docking.initialize(this);

            RootDockingPanel root = new RootDockingPanel(this);
            add(root, BorderLayout.CENTER);

            DockingPanel helloWorld = new DockingPanel("Hello World");

            Docking.dock(helloWorld, this);
        }
    }
    
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(() -> new MainFrame().setVisible(true));
    }
}

Last modified: 21 December 2023