The callback object ProgressListener is used to report on long running operations and provide a chance for the end user to cancel them.

Implementations

There are several implementations available in GeoTools:

• ProgressWindow - provides a swing dialog showing operation progress
• ProgressPrinter - reports operation progress to standard out
• ProgressMailer - will email when the operation is completed

As you can see these really are intended for operations that may take minuets to complete.

There are a couple implementations of direct interest to implementors:

• NullProgressListener - null object to use when you are not interested
• SubProgressListener - used by implementors when delegating a portion of work to a sub operation
• DelegateProgressListener

Example Use

public void doSomething( ProgressListener progress ){
    if( progress == null ) progress = new NullProgressListener();

    progress.started();
    progress.setDecsription("Connect");
    ..connect to data store and obtain feature collection...
    progress.progress( 20 ); // connecting represents 20% of the work

    progress.setDescription("Process features");
    featureCollection.accepts( visitor, new SubProgress( progress, 80 ) );

    progress.completed();
}

This code could be called using:

• doSomething( new ProgressWindow( null ) ); // from a Swing Application
• doSomething( new ProgressMailer( mailserver, emailAddress ) ); // from a web application
• doSomething( new ProgressPrinter() ); // for a command line application
• doSomething( new NullProgressListener() ); // if you don't care

Additional adapters for SWT project are available in the uDig project.

Using ProgressListener to Cancel

The ProgressListener is a general user interface callback object; as such it allows the a user to cancel a long running operations.

final ProgressListener progress= new ProgressWindow( null );
Thread worker = new Thread( new Runnable(){
   public void run(){
      doSomething( progress );
   }
});
cancel.addActionListener( new ActionListener(){
    public void actionPerformed( ActionEvent e ) {
      progress.setCanceled( true );
    }            
});