Current time in plugins?

[bgowland]

As I'm showing Now/Next information info in the dvbt radio plugin, it makes sense that I should show the current time on the plugin screen.

Is there a built-in way of letting the framework handle this automatically or do I have to create a 'current time' panel in the skin and write the code to manage updating it when the time changes?

Cheers,
Brian

[sub]

There is nothing specifically for handling display of the current time, but you can use a UiStatic option for displaying something like this...

Member variable

Code:

private UiStatic currentTimeUiStatic;

In your one-off initialisation function:

Code:

Hashtable args = new Hashtable();
args["@currentTime"] = DateTime.Now.ToShortTimeString();
currentTimeUiStatic = new UiStatic(skinHelper, "CurrentTime", args);

You'd need to define a "CurrentTime" composite image in your skin.xml.

In your needsRendering():

Code:

Hashtable args = new Hashtable();
args["@currentTime"] = DateTime.Now.ToShortTimeString();
currentTimeUiStatic.setArgs(args);

In your GetRenderList()

Code:

renderList.AddRange(currentTimeUiStatic.getRenderList());

The UiStatic is pretty intelligent and will only update/redraw if something actually changes.

[bgowland]

Thanks. I haven't used UiStatic before - it could also be useful for a few other things I need to tidy up.

Cheers,
Brian

[sub]

Its definitely a useful class, and can make things quite a bit simpler.

It can be used to draw all sorts of complex stuff that is defined in the skin composite images. pictures/text etc

[bgowland]

Its definitely a useful class, and can make things quite a bit simpler.

It can be used to draw all sorts of complex stuff that is defined in the skin composite images. pictures/text etc

Yep - I'm already redesigning bits of my code in my head (gone 4am so a bit late to start hacking my working code :eek.

Anyway, I now have a working clock in the plugin which keeps perfect track of time.

Cheers,
Brian