Overlay images in gxt Tree Panel

Question

I'm developing a gxt application that provides a view for svn-like versioning: A TreePanel that displays a file system structure with files and folders having different states (new, modified, deleted, etc.).

I want to display a small overlay icon on each of the items to reflect its state. What I could do, is to create an icon for each state, but I don't want to do that, because I would end up in creating a large bundle of redundant images.

What would be the best way to implement overlay icon capabilities in trees or grids?

Answer 1

After checking the dom of the tree structure, I figured out that a tree icon is displayed using the background-url css attribute. To ensure the image is being displayed with correct size, the src attribute of the element is filled with a placeholder image url.

The trick is, to replace the placeholder image with the overlay icon, since it is displayed above the actual image.

To accomplish this, I extended ClippedImagePrototype to inject the url of the overlay image:

public class OverlayImagePrototype extends ClippedImagePrototype {
  protected String overlayImageUrl = null;

  public static AbstractImagePrototype create(ImageResource resource, String overlayUrl) {
    return new OverlayImagePrototype(resource.getSafeUri(),
                 resource.getLeft(), resource.getTop(), resource.getWidth(),
                 resource.getHeight(), overlayUrl);
  }

  private OverlayImagePrototype(SafeUri url, int left, int top, int width,
                                int height, String overlayUrl) {
    super(url, left, top, width, height);
    this.overlayImageUrl = overlayUrl;
  }

  public ImagePrototypeElement createElement() {
    ImagePrototypeElement imgEl = super.createElement();
    if (overlayImageUrl != null) {
      imgEl.setAttribute("src", overlayImageUrl);
    }
    return imgEl;
  }
}

This is how I use OverlayImagePrototype in the IconProvider implementation:

tree.setIconProvider(new ModelIconProvider<ModelData>() {
  public AbstractImagePrototype getIcon(ModelData model) {
    return OverlayImagePrototype.create(model.get("icon"), model.get("overlayIconUrl"));
  }
});