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| Resource properties |
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| <h2>Resource properties</h2> |
| <p>Resources have properties that can be used to store meta-information about the resource. Your plug-in |
| can use these properties to hold information about a resource that is specific to your purpose. |
| Resource properties are declared, accessed, and maintained by various plug-ins, and are not interpreted |
| by the platform. When a resource is deleted from the workspace, its properties are also deleted. |
| </p> |
| <p>There are two kinds of resource properties: |
| </p> |
| <ul> |
| <li><b>Session properties</b> allow your plug-ins to easily cache information about a resource in key-value pairs. |
| The values are arbitrary objects. These properties are maintained in memory and lost when a resource is |
| deleted from the workspace, or when the project or workspace is closed.</li> |
| <li><b>Persistent properties</b> are used to store resource-specific information on disk. The value of a |
| persistent property is an arbitrary string. Your plug-in decides how to interpret the string. The strings are |
| intended to be short (under 2KB). Persistent properties are stored on disk with the platform metadata and |
| maintained across platform shutdown and restart.</li> |
| </ul> |
| <p>If you follow the convention of qualifying property key names with the unique id of your plug-in, you won't |
| have to worry about your property names colliding with those of other plug-ins. |
| </p> |
| <p>If your plug-in needs to store persistent information about a project that is much larger than 2 KB, then these |
| properties should be exposed as resources in their own right, rather than using the persistent properties API. |
| </p> |
| <p>See <b><a href="../reference/api/org/eclipse/core/resources/IResource.html"> |
| IResource</a></b> for a description of the API for getting and setting the different kinds |
| of resource properties. |
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