Eclipse RCP: save a perspective programmatically

Question

I need to customize my RCP Application and the usage of perspectives a bit. In particular, I want to provide a custom menu item that lets the user save the current perspective, but WITHOUT showing the built-in Dialog:

So I don't want to use the default eclipse way to register the "Save Perspective" Action and put it into the menu. Ie, I don't want to do that:

@Override
protected void makeActions(IWorkbenchWindow window)
{
    // ...
    register(ActionFactory.SAVE_PERSPECTIVE.create(window));
    // ...
}

@Override
protected void fillMenuBar(IMenuManager menuBar)
{
    // ...
    windowMenu.add(getAction(ActionFactory.SAVE_PERSPECTIVE.getId()));
    // ...
}

So, if I write a custom Action, what do I need to do there to save the current perspective?

Answer 1

It's fairly simple. In the custom Action I do the following to save the perspective:

IWorkbenchPage page = window.getActivePage();
IPerspectiveRegistry perspectiveRegistry = window.getWorkbench()
        .getPerspectiveRegistry();
IPerspectiveDescriptor personalPerspectiveDescriptor = perspectiveRegistry
        .findPerspectiveWithId(perspectiveId);

if (page != null && personalPerspectiveDescriptor != null) {
    // ... other stuff like different confirm dialogs
    page.savePerspectiveAs(personalPerspectiveDescriptor);
}

A nice example of how to use perspectives for letting the user customize their layouts without showing too much of the built-in perspective functionality can be found here:

http://www.subshell.com/en/subshell/blog/article-Eclipse-RCP-Change-Your-Perspective100.html