Embed custom widget in SWT Tree or Table

Question

Using SWT, Is it possible to create a custom widget and insert it to a Table or Tree as if it was a TreeItem or TableItem?

I tried to create a class and extend TreeItem but I'm getting this warning:

MyClass illegally extends TreeItem

Is there a way to do this?

Answer 1

Most SWT widgets are not designed to be extended and enforce this by checking that the current class is in the org.eclipse.swt.widgets package. This can be worked around but is very strongly discouraged.

Widgets generally contain a lot of platform specific code, an override class might very easily end up using code which will only work on one platform.

There are various other ways to extend tables and trees. Using TableEditor and TreeEditor is one way. Drawing the table/tree yourself using SWT.MeasureItem, SWT.PaintItem and SWT.EraseItem is another.