33.2 Customizing the Dialog Output

Because the id of a widget can be any string, you can construct a wide variety of output formats simply by changing the form of the id. Some common use-cases are:

Bash style dash arguments, e.g.:

id=" -name " => -name value

Simulator style plus arguments, e.g.:

id=" +incdir+" => +incdir+value

Make style equals arguments, e.g.:

id=" name=" => name=value

The dvt:Container widget

This widget acts just like a Composite (i.e. you can surround sets of widgets or composites with it), but also takes some configuration parameters that are applied for all the widgets it contains.

To specify values for checkboxes use checkboxOffValue and checkboxOnValue parameters:

XML

   <dvt:Container layout="layout:grid;" parameters="checkboxOnValue: -cov 1;checkboxOffValue: -cov 0">
       <Button id=" " style="CHECK" text="Collect coverage" selection="true" />
   </dvt:Container>
   <dvt:Container layout="layout:grid;" parameters="checkboxOnValue: -wave 1;checkboxOffValue: -wave 0">
       <Button id=" " style="CHECK" text="Dump wave" />
   </dvt:Container>

Output:

-cov 1 -wave 0

The default separator for list elements is ;. To change it, use listSeparator parameter:

XML

   <dvt:Container parameters="listSeparator: -f ">
       <dvt:DirectoryFilesListing id=" -f " rootDirectory="/tmp/files"/>
   </dvt:Container>

Output:

-f file_1 -f file_3 -f file_5 -f file_7

To prevent the widget id from being output when the value is empty use noIdForEmptyValues parameter:

XML

   <dvt:Container parameters="noIdForEmptyValues:true">
       <Text id=" -text "></Text>
   </dvt:Container>

To quote values use quoteWith parameter:

XML

   <dvt:Container layout="layout:grid;numColumns:2;" parameters="quoteWith:'">
       <Label text="Text:"></Label>
       <Text id=" -text " style="BORDER" text="text with whitespace that needs to be quoted" />
   </dvt:Container>

Output:

-text 'text with whitespace that needs to be quoted'

Note: If you wish to quote a string with double quotes you should escape the double quote character from XML syntax as follows:

<dvt:Container parameters="quoteWith:"">

To show information about the value of a certain widget in the console title use showInTitle parameter:

XML

   <dvt:Container parameters="showInTitle:true">
      <Label text="Seed:"></Label>
      <Text id=" -seed " style="BORDER" text="42223" />
   </dvt:Container>

Output

To disable a set of widgets based on the selection state of a radio button, checkbox or the value of a combobox or text widget, wrap the set of widgets you want to disable in a <dvt:Container> and specify which widget dictates its enablement using the enabler attribute. You can refer to a widget with its standard XML XPath within the dialog xml:

XML

Output

XML

Output

You can combine the states of multiple buttons or comboboxes/text widgets using logical operators, and you can refer the same widget from multiple <dvt:Container> widgets:

XML

Output

NOTE: To easily obtain the XPath to a specific widget run the dialog once, and identify the widget(s) inside the <dialog_name>.snapshots.xml file which is automatically generated/updated by DVT after each run.

Further customization can easily be achieved by using a simple script for processing arguments. E.g. with the following bash snippet you can convert any argument to any desired form:

   #!/bin/bash
   #
   # bash_arg_converter.sh
   #
   while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do
       case $1 in
         -custom_*)
            argname="$1"
            shift
            argval="$1"

## Customize here to desired format ##

            echo -n " $argname $argval "
         ;;
         *)
            echo -n " $1 "
         ;;
       esac
       shift
   done

In the configuration command box use the following instead of ${dvt_dialog_prompt}:

`./bash_arg_converter.sh ${dvt_dialog_prompt:customdialog.swtxml}`

How to avoid quoting problems: in the .swtxml file it is recommended to use \" for nested quotes and for the Launch Command (Run Configurations > Launch Command) the variable ${dvt_dialog_prompt:customdialog.swtxml} should be surrounded by quotes, like in the image below: