Provides interfaces and classes in Vaadin.

Package Specification

Interface hierarchy

The general interface hierarchy looks like this:

Note that the above picture includes only the main interfaces. This package includes several other lesser sub-interfaces which are not significant in this scope. The interfaces not appearing here are documented with the classes that define them.

The {@link com.vaadin.ui.Component} interface is the top-level interface which must be implemented by all user interface components in Vaadin. It defines the common properties of the components and how the framework will handle them. Most simple components, such as {@link com.vaadin.ui.Button}, for example, do not need to implement the lower-level interfaces described below. Notice that also the classes and interfaces required by the component event framework are defined in {@link com.vaadin.ui.Component}.

The next level in the component hierarchy are the classes implementing the {@link com.vaadin.ui.ComponentContainer} interface. It adds the capacity to contain other components to {@link com.vaadin.ui.Component} with a simple API.

The third and last level is the {@link com.vaadin.ui.Layout}, which adds the concept of location to the components contained in a {@link com.vaadin.ui.ComponentContainer}. It can be used to create containers which contents can be positioned.

Component class hierarchy

The actual component classes form a hierarchy like this:

At the top level is {@link com.vaadin.ui.AbstractComponent} which implements the {@link com.vaadin.ui.Component} interface. As the name suggests it is abstract, but it does include a default implementation for all methods defined in Component so that a component is free to override only those functionalities it needs.

As seen in the picture, AbstractComponent serves as the superclass for several "real" components, but it also has a some abstract extensions. {@link com.vaadin.ui.AbstractComponentContainer} serves as the root class for all components (for example, panels and windows) who can contain other components. {@link com.vaadin.ui.AbstractField}, on the other hand, implements several interfaces to provide a base class for components that are used for data display and manipulation.