public interface Reflection

Registering Classes for Reflection

In order to specify a SmartGWT class as a constructor in Component XML or Component Schema, or for other purposes, such as for autoChildren or for DataSourceField.setEditorType(Class), you must first register the class with the BeanFactory reflection mechanism.

If you want to register Canvas and all its subclasses found in the classpath (including your custom subclasses), you can use the BeanFactory.CanvasMetaFactory interface to do this automatically:

  GWT.create(BeanFactory.CanvasMetaFactory.class);

Similarly, to register FormItem and all its subclasses found in the classpath (including your custom subclasses), you can use the BeanFactory.FormItemMetaFactory.

  GWT.create(BeanFactory.FormItemMetaFactory.class);

Alternatively, if only specific classes need to be instantiated and configured dynamically, you can register just those classes by annotating them with the BeanFactory.Generate annotation instead. For instance:

  @BeanFactory.Generate
  public class MyCanvas extends Canvas {
      ...
  }

For framework classes (where you cannot annotate the class directly), you can supply an array of Class literals to the annotation. For instance:

  @BeanFactory.Generate({Canvas.class, TreeGrid.class})
  public interface EmptyInterface {
      ...
  }

When you supply an array of class literals, the class you annotate (here EmptyInterface) will not itself have a BeanFactory generated for it. Thus, you can use an empty inner interface for this purpose.

If there are only a limited number of classes which require dynamic configuration, it will save code size to use the BeanFactory.Generate annotation to generate factories for those specific types, rather than using BeanFactory.CanvasMetaFactory or BeanFactory.FormItemMetaFactory. Once a factory is generated for a class, GWT's opportunities to prune dead code are more limited for that class, since it cannot know what properties will be set or retrieved at run-time.

Interface Reflection

Registering Classes for Reflection