Patent ID: 8930891
Filing Date: 2015-01-06
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A method for creating a process of visual manipulations of objects of all kinds of software types in an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), said process includes adding any kinds of types to a toolbox, including types not derived from a specific class, not implementing specific interfaces, generic types and types without parameter-less constructors, said process includes design-time object creation from a toolbox, said process prepares objects so that an IDE can visually manipulate objects of any kinds of types, including types not derived from a specific class, not implementing specific interfaces, generic types and types without parameter-less constructors, said process includes a component, where the component is called XClass, XClass is designed to meet all requirements for it to be able to be visually manipulated and added to a toolbox by a state-of-art IDE, XClass represents an object being programmed, type of object being programmed is called “object-type”, XClass includes information for “object-type”, constructor of an object being programmed, and “object-property-values”, where “object-property-values” include values for properties of “object-type”, constructor of object being programmed, values for constructor parameters, and values of type parameters if “object-type” is a generic type; said process includes a process of adding new toolbox items: an IDE maintains a type-map, where the type-map is a dictionary of types, said dictionary uses string as key, to add a new toolbox item for a type to a toolbox, the IDE adds said type to type-map by generating an unique key based on name of said type, the IDE creates a new toolbox item using type XClass, said new toolbox item uses said key as its display text, said process includes a process of creating object instance by selecting a toolbox item: a user selects a toolbox item for creating an object instance in programming, an XClass object instance is created, an IDE locates a type from said type-map using display text of the selected toolbox item as dictionary key, the located type is passed to said XClass object instance as its “object-type”, if the located type is a generic type definition then the IDE shows a type-selection dialogue box for user to specify types for type parameters, if the located type has more than one constructor then the IDE shows all the constructors for user to select one constructor and its constructor-parameters, if the located type has only one constructor with one or more parameters then the IDE allows user to specify constructor-parameters.