Visual Editor's Java beans

A model of live Java beans is maintained by the Visual Editor, allowing you to see the graphical representation of Java beans that are java.awt.Component subclasses, and to display the values in the Properties view for unset properties. This is done by creating a target VM for each instance of the Visual Editor, where the Java bean classes used by the editor are loaded, instantiated, and sent get and set methods as required. Typically, you don't need to be concerned with this VM. However, situations may arise where you need to analyze or debug behavior specific to it. For example, when exceptions are thrown by the Java beans in a target VM, you might need to debug.

Since the target VM is running live code, there is an overhead associated with it in terms of performance and fidelity of the application. If you develop a Java bean that will be executed in the target VM, and you wish its behavior in the Visual Editor environment to be different in a runtime VM, you can query the static method java.beans.Beans.isDesignTime(). This returns the value true for the Visual Editor's target VM, and false otherwise.

Related tasks
Identifying Java bean exceptions
Debugging Java beans

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