Working With Layouts

Layouts can be created in memory from scratch with a builder, pulled from the current window or application layout and saved to files for long term storage.

In memory layouts are created using the WindowLayoutBuilder class and are built using persistentIDs only, by calling similar dock functions to the ones provided in the Docking class. These persistentIDs do not need to be currently registered in the docking framework to be added to WindowLayoutBuilder. An error will be thrown if the persistentID already exists in the layout. When done building the layout, call build() to create a WindowLayout or buildApplicationLayout() to directly build an ApplicationLayout. If you're building a layout for multiple windows, you can manually create an ApplicationLayout and use WindowLayoutBuilder to create layouts and add them to ApplicationLayout with addFrame.

The WindowLayout and ApplicationLayout can then be saved to XML, as well as loaded, with the WindowLayoutXML and ApplicationLayoutXML classes, respectively.

The docking framework can store these layouts for you and provides special JMenuItems that can restore named layouts on the application.

Layouts can be restored by using the restoreApplicationLayout and restoreWindowLayout methods of the DockingState class. This undocks all dockables from the window (or entire application for an ApplicationLayout) and docks the dockables specified by the layout.