FR / Design idea : Custom Component Extractors

[baconpaul]

I have a style system for my widgets which is different than the Look and Feel. It has pros and cons but I'm using it in a couple of places. Cool

What I'd like is to be able to see that custom style info in melatonin. I can easily write this code to get items given a Component * and a dynamic cast.

But that made me think it would be great if we could add per-application component extractors into the properties pane. I'm considering something like this (but haven't read the code enough to know exact syntax)

Add to Inspector addCustomComponentExtractor(const juce::String &name, std::function<some_t(juce::Component *)>). When you make the properties plane, call the list of custom functions and put them as sub-trees or some such in the properties list under name.

That would let me do something like

inspector = std::make_unique<Inspector>(*this);
inspector->addCustomCompoenntExtractor("set-stylesheets", [](auto *c) { if (auto s = dynamic_cast<stylething*>(c)) { return { {"style", c->style()->blah}, {"this that", theother}}

then i can make it so i can extend melatonin for particular application or widget set views from the outside.

Thoughts?

[baconpaul]

oh i'm happy to code up all these things by the way but want to ask before i dive into them.

[sudara]

I also don't use look and feels. What I do right now is expose style information to the inspector by adding properties to components:

        setProperty ("Theme Key", themeKey);

which just calls getProperties().set (key, value); and shows up like so:

That being said, I have thought about and do like a better supported way of acquiring data from components. Let me marinate on it a few!

[baconpaul]

Yeah I saw that! It useful but would have me lift loads of information into properties just for melatonin which is why I thought of a custom lambda

I’ll ponder also as I poke around

[dikadk]

I like this idea! Seems like feature that will make melatonin more extensible and will cover more ways for 'styling' apps.

[baconpaul]

Thanks!

From poking around I think the right function for the callback function is

std::function<bool(juce::Array<juce::Var> &, juce::Array<PropertyComponent *>&)

that is you get sent a Var and Component array to populate and return whether or not you added anything.