Registering a Custom Component

In addition to registering custom renderers (as explained in the preceding section), you also must register the custom components that are usually associated with the custom renderers.

Here is the component element from the application configuration resource file that registers the AreaComponent:

<component>
  <component-type>DemoArea</component-type>
  <component-class>
    components.AreaComponent
  </component-class>
  <property>
    <property-name>alt</property-name>
    <property-class>java.lang.String</property-class>
  </property>
  <property>
    <property-name>coords</property-name>
    <property-class>java.lang.String</property-class>
  </property>
  <property>
    <property-name>shape</property-name>
    <property-class>java.lang.String</property-class>
  </property>
  <component-extension>
    <component-family>Area</component-family>
    <renderer-type>DemoArea</renderer-type>
  </component-extension>
</component>

The component-type element indicates the name under which the component should be registered. Other objects referring to this component use this name. The component-class element indicates the fully qualified class name of the component. The property elements specify the component properties and their types.

The component-extension element identifies a set of renderers that can render this component. This allows a component to be rendered by multiple renderers and allows a renderer to render multiple components.