Platform Explorer view

The platform explorer is one of the views granting a look into the Eclipse platform. It can be displayed using the main menu path Window | Show View and following the tree path Eclipse Introspection | Platform Explorer in the dialog Show View.

The tree viewer starts at the plugin level as the root and on expansion shows all the getter methods of it that have no parameters as children. The getter nodes are formatted like <getter_method_name>[<index>]<result>. The <index> part is only shown for oprations returning arrays. Hence, such nodes might occur more than once identifying the index of the array item returned. The values for <result> are created by calling the method toString of the objects.

Expanding a getter node shows all of the getter methods of its result object and so forth. The tree is also synchronized with the Properties view, listing all of the properties of the selected tree node.

The Platform Explorer view looks as following:

Platform Explorer View

View Commands

Refresh: Resets all the shown tree information to only the root entry.
Open Type Declaration: Opens the declaration of the return value of the selected getter method. This action only works if the library (jar) file containing the regarding class is in the libraries list of the Java Build Path of the active Java project. In case no source is attached to the library, only o high level of the class is given in the default editor assigned to class files. Assigning source zip files to libraries enables the default class editor to show the Java code rather than the class overview.
Open Method Declaration: Opens the declaration of the selected getter method. Like for the previous command the library containing the class that defines the method has to be in the class path of the active project.
Show Type Documentation: Shows the documentation of the return type of the selected getter method in the help window. If there is no reference documentation available for the selected type, its superclasses and implemented interfaces are searched for reference documents. In case there is such reference documentation it is shown in the help window. On more than one available reference document, a dialog pops up allowing to make a choice.
Show Method Documentation: Shows the documentation of the selected getter method in the help window. If there is no reference documentation available for the selected method, its superclasses and implemented interfaces are searched for reference documents for the method. In case there is such reference documentation it is shown in the help window. On more than one available reference document, a dialog pops up allowing to make a choice.
Go Home: Returns to the initial root level in case a previos call of the action Go Into made a child node the current root of the tree view.
Go Back: Returns to the previous root level in case a previos call of the action Go Into made a child node the current root of the tree view.
Go Into: Makes the selected child node the current root of the tree view.