Controlling BeanInfo information for plug-in developers

If you wish to exercise control over how the BeanInfo classes are associated with a class path variable, you can do this with an entry in a plug-in manifest file. This is only intended for advanced users who are either supplying their own Java beans or for users who wish to create a new runtime environment other than JRE_LIB.

The extension point to use is com.ibm.etools.beaninfo.registrations, which lets you specify the variable with the location of its BeanInfo classes.

 <extension point="com.ibm.etools.beaninfo.registrations">
  <variable path="MY_JAVABEANS">
     <beaninfos>
    <beaninfo kind="plugin"
path="/com.mycompany/myjavabeans.jar">
       <searchpath package="com.mycompany.beaninfopackage"/>
     </beaninfo>
      </beaninfos>
   </variable>
  </extension>

The above example shows that the class path variable MY_JAVABEANS has its BeanInfo classes contained in the JAR file myjavabeans.jar. This JAR is part of the plug-in that the manifest is defined in, and the classes are included in the package com.mycompany.beaninfopackage. Whenever a project has the class path variable MY_JAVABEANS in its Java build path, then myjavabeans.jar will be included in the classpath of the JVM created for the introspector. Also, the package com.mycompany.beaninfopackage will be included in its search path.

Related concepts
BeanInfo classes and introspection
Specifying the location of BeanInfo classes
BeanInfo classes for JRE classes
BeanInfo classes for the Visual Editor for Java

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