NGDesktop UI plugin

Welcome to the ngdesktopui wiki! This wiki provides comprehensive documentation to using the ngdesktopui web service. This service works with the NGDesktop Client as a bridge to execute client side calls dealing with UI from Servoy.

Getting Started

First import the service one of the release binaries or via Servoy's Web Package Manager.

Example Usage

The following code snippet is create a sample menu for NGDesktop:

function createTestMenu(event) {

var isMac = application.getOSName().toUpperCase().indexOf('MAC')>=0;
var menu = plugins.ngdesktopui;
menu.removeAllMenus();
var ngdesktopIndex = menu.addMenu("Servoy NGDesktop"); //on MacOS this name is hidden
menu.addMenuItem(ngdesktopIndex,"About Servoy NGDesktop...",callback);
menu.addSeparator(ngdesktopIndex);
menu.addRoleItem(ngdesktopIndex,"services");
menu.addSeparator(ngdesktopIndex);
if (isMac) {
	menu.addRoleItem(ngdesktopIndex,"hide", "Hide this application");
	menu.addRoleItem(ngdesktopIndex,"hideOthers");
	menu.addSeparator(ngdesktopIndex);
}
menu.addRoleItem(ngdesktopIndex,"quit");

//add file menu
var fileIndex = menu.addMenu("File");
menu.addMenuItem(fileIndex,"New",callback);
menu.addMenuItem(fileIndex,"Open...",callback);

//insert menuitem example
//since this will be a submenu the callback is set to null
recentIndex = menu.addMenuItem(fileIndex,"Open recent", null, 1);
addRecentFiles(fileIndex, recentIndex);

//add edit menu
var editIndex = menu.addMenu("Edit");
menu.addRoleItem(editIndex,"undo");
menu.addRoleItem(editIndex,"redo");
menu.addSeparator(editIndex);
menu.addRoleItem(editIndex,"cut");
menu.addRoleItem(editIndex,"copy");
menu.addRoleItem(editIndex,"paste");

//add help menu
var helpIndex = menu.addMenu("Help");
menu.addMenuItem(helpIndex,"Search...",callback);
menu.addMenuItem(helpIndex,"Servoy NGDesktop help",callback)

}

function addRecentFiles(menuIndex, submenuIndex) {

var menu = plugins.ngdesktopui;
var position = menu.addMenuItem(menuIndex,"Bureau.pdf",callback, 0, submenuIndex);
position = menu.addMenuItem(menuIndex,"Advertising.pdf",callback, position + 1, submenuIndex);
position = menu.addSeparator(menuIndex,position + 1, submenuIndex);
position = menu.addRoleItem(menuIndex,"clearRecentDocuments", null, position + 1,submenuIndex);

}

The following issues has been discovered so far:

• setMenuBarVisibility has no effect on MacOS. You can't hide a MacOS menu
• removeAllMenus - for MacOS is display a minimal menu having the app name as Menu name and Quit option as menuItem
• on macOS - the first menuName is always the app name: first addMenu(menuName) will not display the "menuName" but the app name. The name behind (which you will work with), still remain "menuName"
• on MacOS - the checkboxes and radio buttons in menus are not correctly rendered. This seems to be a Chromium issue. Further investigation needed for this
• When clicking on a radio button - it will be selected, and the previous radio buttons (from the adiacent radio items) will be deselected. However, calling multiple times addRadioButton(menuName, menuitemName, true) will add multiple selected radio buttons (they will unselect automatically when one radio button is selected). It is your responsability to call addRadioButton() with "selected" parameter set to true - only once. The same issue is true also for insertRadioButton

The following sample will create a custom tray menu for NG Desktop:

function createTrayMenu(event) {

var trayMenu = plugins.ngdesktopui.createTrayMenu();
trayMenu.title = NG Desktop'; //optional
trayMenu.tooltip = 'Testing tray menu'; //optional
trayMenu.icon = solutionModel.getMedia('tray_close.png').getBytes(); //optional
trayMenu.pressedIcon = solutionModel.getMedia('tray_open.png').getBytes();//optional

trayMenu.addMenuItem(0, 'Sys info', trayCallback);
trayMenu.addMenuItem(1, 'Maximise', trayCallback);
trayMenu.addMenuItem(2, 'Unmaximise', trayCallback);
trayMenu.addMenuItem(3, 'Home directory', trayCallback);
trayMenu.addSeparator(4);
trayMenu.addRoleItem(5, 'Quit');

trayMenu.done();

}

function trayCallback(itemName, itemType, itemStatus) {

switch (itemName ) {
	case 'Sys info':
		var sysInfo = plugins.ngdesktoputils.getSystemInformation();
		plugins.dialogs.showInfoDialog('System', 'Platform: ' + sysInfo.osPlatform + '     Version: ' + sysInfo.osRelease);
		break;
	case 'Maximise':
		plugins.ngdesktopui.maximizeWindow();
		break;
	case 'Unmaximise':
		plugins.ngdesktopui.unmaximizeWindow();
		break;
	case 'Home directory':
		plugins.dialogs.showInfoDialog('Home directory',plugins.ngdesktopfile.homeDir());
		break;
}

}

API Documentation

Callback function

The callback function is receiving the following parameters:

Params

Type	Name	Summary
string	text	clicked item name
string	type	clicked item type ("normal", "checkbox", "radio")
boolean	checked	check state (true or false for checkboxes, true for radio buttons and undefined for the other types)

Method Summary

addMenu

Add new menu to existing menubar

Params

Type	Name	Summary	Required
string	text	Menu label	Required
index	int	Insert position	Optional

removeMenu

Remove specified menu

Params

Type	Name	Summary	Required
index	int	Menu index (zero based)	Required

addDevToolsMenu

Add Developer Tools menu to the menu bar. Use it just for debugging. Remove any call to this function once you're done.

getMenuIndexByText

Return the index order of the menu (zero based index)

Params

Type	Name	Summary	Required
string	text	Menu label to query	Required

getMenuText

Return the menu label

Params

Type	Name	Summary	Required
int	index	Index to query	Required

getMenuCount

Count menus from the menubar

removeAllMenus

Cleanup the menubar. For Mac OS this means to display a minimal menu.

setMenuBarVisibility

Show/Hide menu bar. On MacOS this method has no effect

Params

Type	Name	Summary	Required
boolean	visibility	true - show menubar, false - hide menubar	Required

removeAllMenuItems

Cleanup the specified menu

Params

Type	Name	Summary	Required
int	index	Menu index to cleanup	Required

addSeparator

Add a separator line

Params

Type	Name	Summary	Required
int	index	Menu index	Required
int	position	Insert position	Optional
int	itemIndex	Submenu index	Optional

addMenuItem

Add an item to the specified menu

Params

Type	Name	Summary	Required
int	index	Menu index	Required
string	text	Menu label	Required
function	callback	Callback function	Required (may be null)
int	position	Insert position	Optional
int	itemIndex Submenu index	Optional

removeMenuItem

Delete an item

Params

Type	Name	Summary	Required
int	index	Menu index	Required
int	position	Insert position	Required
int	itemIndex Submenu index	Optional

getMenuItemsCount

Count items

Params

Type	Name	Summary	Required
int	index	Menu index	Required
int	itemIndex	Submenu index	Optional

addCheckBox

Add a checkbox to the specified menu

Params

Type	Name	Summary	Required
int	index	Menu index	Required
string	text	Menu label	Required
function	callback	Callback function	Required (may be null)
boolean	checked	initial checkbox status (default is false)	Optional
int	position	Insert position	Optional
int	itemIndex Submenu index	Optional

addRadioButton

Add a radio button to the specified menu. Note that the first added radio button in the group is alwasy selected regardless the 'selected' value There are no group creation method. A group consist from all adiacent radio buttons in a menu

Params

Type	Name	Summary	Required
int	index	Menu index	Required
string	text	Menu label	Required
function	callback	Callback function	Required (may be null)
boolean	selected	select radio button (default is false)	Optional
int	position	Insert position	Optional
int	itemIndex Submenu index	Optional

getMenuItemIndexByText

Get menuitem index from the specified menu

Params

Type	Name	Summary	Required
int	index	Menu index	Required
string	text	Item label to query for	Required

getMenuItemText

Get menuitem label

Params

Type	Name	Summary	Required
int	index	Menu index	Required
int	itemIndex	Menuitem index	Required

addRoleItem

Roles allow menu items to have predefined behaviors.

Params

Type	Name	Summary	Required
int	index	Menu index	Required
string	role	The item role (see below)	Required
string	text	The item label	Optional
int	position	Insert position	Optional
int	itemIndex	Submenu index	Optional

It is best to specify role for any menu item that matches a standard role, rather than trying to manually implement the behavior using a callback function. The built-in role behavior will give the best native experience.

The role property can have following values:

• undo
• about - Trigger a native about panel (custom message box on Window, which does not provide its own).
• redo
• cut
• copy
• paste
• pasteAndMatchStyle
• selectAll
• delete
• minimize - Minimize current window.
• close - Close current window.
• quit - Quit the application.
• reload - Reload the current window.
• forceReload - Reload the current window ignoring the cache.
• toggleDevTools - Toggle developer tools in the current window.
• togglefullscreen - Toggle full screen mode on the current window.
• resetZoom - Reset the focused page's zoom level to the original size.
• zoomIn - Zoom in the focused page by 10%.
• zoomOut - Zoom out the focused page by 10%.
• fileMenu - Whole default "File" menu (Close / Quit)
• editMenu - Whole default "Edit" menu (Undo, Copy, etc.).
• viewMenu - Whole default "View" menu (Reload, Toggle Developer Tools, etc.)
• windowMenu - Whole default "Window" menu (Minimize, Zoom, etc.).

The following additional roles are available on macOS:

• appMenu - Whole default "App" menu (About, Services, etc.)
• hide - Map to the hide action.
• hideOthers - Map to the hideOtherApplications action.
• unhide - Map to the unhideAllApplications action.
• startSpeaking - Map to the startSpeaking action.
• stopSpeaking - Map to the stopSpeaking action.
• front - Map to the arrangeInFront action.
• zoom - Map to the performZoom action.
• toggleTabBar - Map to the toggleTabBar action.
• selectNextTab - Map to the selectNextTab action.
• selectPreviousTab - Map to the selectPreviousTab action.
• mergeAllWindows - Map to the mergeAllWindows action.
• moveTabToNewWindow - Map to the moveTabToNewWindow action.
• window - The submenu is a "Window" menu.
• help - The submenu is a "Help" menu.
• services - The submenu is a "Services" menu. This is only intended for use in the Application Menu and is not the same as the "Services" submenu used in context menus in macOS apps, which is not implemented in Electron.
• recentDocuments - The submenu is an "Open Recent" menu.
• clearRecentDocuments - Map to the clearRecentDocuments action.

createBrowserView

Creates a BrowserView (looks like an iframe) and adds this to the current window at the given coordinates with the given width and height. It returns and id that can be used to close/clean up this view later on, or to target that view to inject some javascript.

Params

Type	Name	Summary	Required
int	x	The X coordinate to position this view	Required
int	y	The Y coordinate to position this view	Required
int	width	The width of this view	Required
int	height	The height of this view	Required
string	url	The url to load into this view	Required

closeBrowserView

Closes a and destroys a previously created BrowserView by the given id.

Params

Type	Name	Summary	Required
int	id	The id of the view to close	Required

injectJSIntoBrowserView

Injects the given javascript into the content of the BrowserView of the given id. The javascript can be a function declaration that is then called later on. The last statement return value is given back to the callback as a first argument. If something goes wrong then the callback is called where the first argument is null and a second argument has the message of the exception.

Params

Type	Name	Summary	Required
int	id	The id of the view to execute javascript in	Required
string	js	The piece of javascript that is injected into this view	Required
function	callback	the callback function that is used to get the results or exception if the call fails	Required

createTrayMenu

Return a TrayMenu object type.

TrayMenu properties

Type | Name | Summary | Required string | title | tray menu title displayed next to the tray icon | Optional string | tooltip | just a tooptip | Optional byte[] | icon | icon to be displayed in the tray | Optional byte[] | pressedIcon | icon to be displayed when opening the tray (MacOS only) | Optional

TrayMenu api

This methods are available only through the TrayMenu object - trayMenu.method(params). The autocompletion is not yet available

Callback function

The callback function is receiving the following parameters:

Type	Name	Summary	Required
string	text	clicked item name	Required
string	type	clicked item type ("normal", "checkbox")	Required
boolean	checked	check state (true or false for checkboxes, false otherwise)	Required

addMenuItem

Add item to the tray menu

Type	Name	Summary	Required
int	index	zero based index where to add / insert items in tray menu	Required
string	text	menu item text	Required
function	callback	Callback function	Required

removeMenuItem

Type	Name	Summary	Required
int	index	zero based index of the item to be removed	Required

addCheckBox

Type	Name	Summary	Required
int	index	zero based index where to add / insert items in tray menu	Required
string	text	menu item text	Required
function	callback	Callback function	Required
boolean	checked	Initial status of the checkbox	Required

addSeparator

Params

Type	Name	Summary	Required
int	index	zero based index of the position where to add / insert the separator	Required

addRoleItem

Add a tray menu item with predefined (system) behavior. For details, check the documentation for the addRoleItem method above (for NG Desktop menu)

Params

Type	Name	Summary	Required
int	index	zero based index of the position where to add / insert role	Required
string	role	The item role (see above ethod with the same name)	Required
string	text	Role label	Optional

done

When all desired changes to the tray menu are finalized, call this method for the changes to takes effect.

Example Usage

// open google.com
var id = plugins.ngdesktopui.createBrowserView(100,200,700,500,"https://www.google.com/");
// get the value of the search field and return this.
plugins.ngdesktopui.injectJSIntoBrowserView(id, "function test() { return document.getElementsByName('q')[0].value};test();", callback);