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Add eclipse-rcp's views short list, perspective short list in the org.eclipse.ui.menus plugin via dynamic CompoundContributionItem class

Recently, I've encountered a problem wherein I wanted to display the eclipse-rcp's list of view, perspective etc using the extension org.eclipse.ui.menus. The problem can easily solved by the ApplicationActionBarAdvisor, see the code below:


private IContributionItem showViewItem;
protected void makeActions(final IWorkbenchWindow window) { 
 listView = ContributionItemFactory.VIEWS_SHORTLIST.create(window);
}

protected void fillMenuBar(IMenuManager menuBar) {
 MenuManager windowMenu = new MenuManager("&Window", IWorkbenchActionConstants.M_WINDOW);
 MenuManager viewManager = new MenuManager("Show View", "showView");
 viewManager.add(listView);
 windowMenu.add(viewManager);
 
 menuBar.add(windowMenu); //adds the Window menu to the horizontal toolbar
}

Unfortunately, this is not what I want and I want to take advantage of the eclipse-rcp's plugin system. So I ended up peeking into the rcp's core classes and found out a solution:

What to do:
1.) Create a new plugin project, Hello World will do.
2.) Open plugin.xml and in the Extensions tab add org.eclipse.ui.menus
a.) add menuContribution and sets its locationURI=menu:org.eclipse.ui.main.menu
b.) right click contribution and select New->menu, change the label=File
c.) right click File menu and select New->menu, change the label=Show View
d.) right click Show View menu and select New->dynamic
d.i) select dynamic and right click class*, name the class and select CompoundContributionItem as its super class
d.ii) example: public class ListView extends CompoundContributionItem { }
3.) Now all we have to do is override the CompoundContributionItem's getContributionItems method, like this:


@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
@Override
protected IContributionItem[] getContributionItems() {
 List menuContributionList = new ArrayList();
 IWorkbenchWindow window = PlatformUI.getWorkbench().getActiveWorkbenchWindow();
 IContributionItem item = ContributionItemFactory.VIEWS_SHORTLIST.create(window);
 menuContributionList.add(item); //add the list of views in the menu
 return menuContributionList.toArray(new IContributionItem[menuContributionList.size()]);
}

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