Check for project errors before performing action - eclipse-plugin

Question

I have an eclipse plug-in which provides a menu item which can be selected to run a command on the currently active file. I would like the plug-in to display a warning message if the currently active file has any errors on it (as reported in the Problems view), similar to how Eclipse acts when you try to run a java project with errors.

Answer 1

I know it's an old question, but I found a solution similar to the one proposed. The code that does what you descrive is in org.eclipse.debug.core.model.LaunchConfigurationDelegate. It checks if the project has errors and show the dialog if needed. Here is the relevant code, from Eclipse Luna:
/**
* Returns whether the given project contains any problem markers of the
* specified severity.
*
* #param proj the project to search
* #return whether the given project contains any problems that should
* stop it from launching
* #throws CoreException if an error occurs while searching for
* problem markers
*/
protected boolean existsProblems(IProject proj) throws CoreException {
IMarker[] markers = proj.findMarkers(IMarker.PROBLEM, true, IResource.DEPTH_INFINITE);
if (markers.length > 0) {
for (int i = 0; i < markers.length; i++) {
if (isLaunchProblem(markers[i])) {
return true;
}
}
}
return false;
}
/**
* Returns whether the given problem should potentially abort the launch.
* By default if the problem has an error severity, the problem is considered
* a potential launch problem. Subclasses may override to specialize error
* detection.
*
* #param problemMarker candidate problem
* #return whether the given problem should potentially abort the launch
* #throws CoreException if any exceptions occur while accessing marker attributes
*/
protected boolean isLaunchProblem(IMarker problemMarker) throws CoreException {
Integer severity = (Integer)problemMarker.getAttribute(IMarker.SEVERITY);
if (severity != null) {
return severity.intValue() >= IMarker.SEVERITY_ERROR;
}
return false;
}
The same code can run on any IResource instead of an IProject.
I managed to find it easily by suspending from the debugger when the dialog was shown and setting a breakpoint on the relevant class and tracing back from there.

Answer 2

Errors are usually saved as IMarkers on a resource (IFile in your case), so you can query the IFile for the markers you are looking for.
You'll need to know the type of the markers before the look-up (either by debugging and get all the current markers, or by looking at the code the contributed them in the validation process of the file).
Hope that helps.