Ressource filter at project level in Eclipse IDE

27 January 2017

If you follow the maven convention in multi-modules maven project, your directory structure will looks like this:

\---parent
    |   .project
    |   pom.xml
    |
    +---project1
    |   |   .classpath
    |   |   .project
    |   |   pom.xml
    |   |
    |   \---src/main/java
    |       \---...
    |
    \---project2
        |   .classpath
        |   .project
        |   pom.xml
        |
        \---src/main/java
            \---...

When the projects are imported in Eclipse IDE, the parent project looks not nice in the Package Explorer. The child modules project1 and project2 appear twice: as sub-folder of the parent project and as separated java project. In my opinion this is not really user-friendly.

Package Explorer

A solution was suggested by Ed Merks: in the parent project, the child folders can be filtered. Use the Ressource Filters at project level. Select the Properties context menu on the parent project and select "Ressource Filters" under "Ressource" in the tree. Click on the Add Filter…​ button. In the Dialog configure your filter to exclude all folders with a name that matches *.

Add a Ressource Filter for project parent

The configuration should look like this:

Ressource Filters - project configuration page

If you have a look at the xml content in the .project file of the parent project, you should see something like this:

	<filteredResources>
		<filter>
			<id>1485436062166</id>
			<name></name>
			<type>10</type>
			<matcher>
				<id>org.eclipse.ui.ide.multiFilter</id>
				<arguments>1.0-name-matches-false-false-*</arguments>
			</matcher>
		</filter>
	</filteredResources>

With this new project configuration, the Package Explorer now hides its child folders. This means that you no longer see the modules project1 and project2 in the parent project:

Package Explorer with hidden child modules

I hope this will helps projects that have similar needs.

There is also an easier way to display this standard maven structure in Eclipse IDE: use the Project Explorer instead of the Package Explorer.

With the menu item Projects Presentation ▸ Hierarchical the display behavior in the Project Explorer can be modified.

Switch the Projects Presentation configuration in the Project Explorer

With this new configuration, the maven structure is reflected in the IDE:

Project Explorer displaying the maven structure

This works even with the resource filter configuration approach presented in this blog post.

Post source on GitHub