I like my trees filtered (Eclipse FilteredTree )

The class org.eclipse.ui.dialogs.FilteredTree is an easy way to filter tree elements. It provides automatically a text field for restricting the entries in the table.

For example a simple application could look like the following.

The following is a small description how to use this (using a Eclipse RCP example).

Create a new Eclipse RCP project, e.g. de.vogella.rcp.intro.filteredtree, using the “Eclipse application with a view” template.

Create the following content and lable provider (they are dead simple).

package de.vogella.rcp.intro.filteredtree;

import org.eclipse.jface.viewers.ITreeContentProvider;
import org.eclipse.jface.viewers.Viewer;

public class TreeContentProvider implements ITreeContentProvider {

	@Override
	public Object[] getChildren(Object arg0) {
		return null;
	}

	@Override
	public Object getParent(Object arg0) {
		return null;
	}

	@Override
	public boolean hasChildren(Object arg0) {
		return false;
	}

	@Override
	public Object[] getElements(Object arg0) {
		String[] array = { "Habelman", "Hans", "Jim", "Joe" };
		return array;
	}

	@Override
	public void dispose() {
	}

	@Override
	public void inputChanged(Viewer arg0, Object arg1, Object arg2) {
	}

}

package de.vogella.rcp.intro.filteredtree;

import org.eclipse.jface.viewers.LabelProvider;

public class TreeLabelProvider extends LabelProvider {
	@Override
	public String getText(Object element) {
		String name = (String) element;
		return name;
	}
}

Then change the View.java to the following to use the FilteredTree in your application.

package de.vogella.rcp.intro.filteredtree;

import org.eclipse.jface.viewers.TreeViewer;
import org.eclipse.swt.SWT;
import org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Composite;
import org.eclipse.ui.dialogs.FilteredTree;
import org.eclipse.ui.dialogs.PatternFilter;
import org.eclipse.ui.part.ViewPart;

public class View extends ViewPart {
	public static final String ID = "de.vogella.intro.rcp.filteredtree.view";
	private TreeViewer viewer;

	public void createPartControl(Composite parent) {
		PatternFilter filter = new PatternFilter();
		FilteredTree tree = new FilteredTree(parent, SWT.MULTI | SWT.H_SCROLL
				| SWT.V_SCROLL, filter, true);

		viewer = tree.getViewer();
		viewer.setContentProvider(new TreeContentProvider());
		viewer.setLabelProvider(new TreeLabelProvider());
		viewer.setInput(getViewSite());
	}

	/**
	 * Passing the focus request to the viewer's control.
	 */
	public void setFocus() {
		viewer.getControl().setFocus();
	}
}