JavaTM 2 Platform
Standard Ed. 5.0

javax.swing.filechooser
Class FileView

java.lang.Object
  extended by javax.swing.filechooser.FileView
Direct Known Subclasses:
BasicFileChooserUI.BasicFileView

public abstract class FileView
extends Object

FileView defines an abstract class that can be implemented to provide the filechooser with UI information for a File. Each L&F JFileChooserUI object implements this class to pass back the correct icons and type descriptions specific to that L&F. For example, the Microsoft Windows L&F returns the generic Windows icons for directories and generic files. Additionally, you may want to provide your own FileView to JFileChooser to return different icons or additional information using JFileChooser.setFileView(javax.swing.filechooser.FileView).

JFileChooser first looks to see if there is a user defined FileView, if there is, it gets type information from there first. If FileView returns null for any method, JFileChooser then uses the L&F specific view to get the information. So, for example, if you provide a FileView class that returns an Icon for JPG files, and returns null icons for all other files, the UI's FileView will provide default icons for all other files.

For an example implementation of a simple file view, see yourJDK/demo/jfc/FileChooserDemo/ExampleFileView.java. For more information and examples see How to Use File Choosers, a section in The Java Tutorial.

See Also:
JFileChooser

Constructor Summary
FileView()
           
 
Method Summary
 String getDescription(File f)
          A human readable description of the file.
 Icon getIcon(File f)
          The icon that represents this file in the JFileChooser.
 String getName(File f)
          The name of the file.
 String getTypeDescription(File f)
          A human readable description of the type of the file.
 Boolean isTraversable(File f)
          Whether the directory is traversable or not.
 
Methods inherited from class java.lang.Object
clone, equals, finalize, getClass, hashCode, notify, notifyAll, toString, wait, wait, wait
 

Constructor Detail

FileView

public FileView()
Method Detail

getName

public String getName(File f)
The name of the file. Normally this would be simply f.getName().


getDescription

public String getDescription(File f)
A human readable description of the file. For example, a file named jag.jpg might have a description that read: "A JPEG image file of James Gosling's face".


getTypeDescription

public String getTypeDescription(File f)
A human readable description of the type of the file. For example, a jpg file might have a type description of: "A JPEG Compressed Image File"


getIcon

public Icon getIcon(File f)
The icon that represents this file in the JFileChooser.


isTraversable

public Boolean isTraversable(File f)
Whether the directory is traversable or not. This might be useful, for example, if you want a directory to represent a compound document and don't want the user to descend into it.


JavaTM 2 Platform
Standard Ed. 5.0

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For further API reference and developer documentation, see Java 2 SDK SE Developer Documentation. That documentation contains more detailed, developer-targeted descriptions, with conceptual overviews, definitions of terms, workarounds, and working code examples.

Copyright 2004 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Use is subject to license terms. Also see the documentation redistribution policy.