Develop Reference

Regulating the number of executions per second using JavaFX

So as of right now I'm implementing Conway's Game of Life using JavaFX. In a nutshell, in my class extending AnimationTimer, within the handle() method, it traverses through every cell in a 2D array and updates each position, then draws to the canvas using the information in the 2D array.
This works completely fine but the problem is it runs far too fast. You can't really see what's going on on the canvas. On the window I have the canvas as well as a few buttons. I added a Thread.sleep(1000) to try to regulate a generation/frame per second, but doing this causes the window to not detect the button presses immediately. The button presses are completely responsive when not telling the thread to sleep.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to solve this?

You can use Timeline which is probably more suitable for this. Set cycle count to Animation.INDEFINITE, and add a KeyFrame with the delay you want between updates, and your current handle implementation as the frame's onFinished.
final Timeline timeline = new Timeline();
timeline.setCycleCount(Timeline.INDEFINITE);
timeline.getKeyFrames().add(
new KeyFrame(
Duration.seconds(1),
event -> handle()
)
);
timeline.play();
Alternatively, you may try to have the delay of the KeyFrame as zero, and use the Timeline's targetFrameRate, but I personally never tried it.
Edit: Another option is to keep a frameSkip variable in your AnimationTimer:
private int frameSkip = 0;
private final int SKIP = 10;
#Override
public void handle(long now) {
frameSkip++;
if (frameSkip <= SKIP) {
// Do nothing, wait for next frame;
return;
}
// Every SKIP frames, reset frameSkip and do animation
frameSkip = 0;
// Do animation...
}

Java Timer crashes my libGdx game

I'm making match3 game on libGdx. After scanning for matches I have to wait for animations to complete and run scanning again until no more matches left. I do it with Java Timer and when I run application on desktop it works fine but on Android device it crashes after one, two or few more iterations. Any ideas what is wrong?
Timer animationTimer;
scanForMatches(){
//do some stuff
//...
checkAnimationComplete();
}
checkAnimationComplete(){
animationTimer = new Timer();
animationTimer.scheduleAtFixedRate(new TimerTask(){
#Override
public void run() {
boolean animDone = true;
// do some stuff to
// check if anim done
if (animDone){
animationTimer.cancel();
scanForMatches();
}
}
}, 1000, 100);
}

Without looking at the rest of your code, I would highly suggest dropping the timer altogether as it is almost certainly unnecessary in this case and not very efficient. Are you using an Action to animate with a stage, or are you manually moving things based on position in draw()? If you are just moving something in draw(), I would use a boolean flag to signal that it has reached it's destination, like if you are dropping down solved tiles or something. If you are using an Action, it is possible to use a new Action to act as a callback like the following...
myGem.addAction(Actions.sequence(
Actions.moveTo(230f, 115f, 0.25f, Interpolation.linear),
new Action() {
public boolean act(float delta) {
System.out.println("Done moving myGem!");
scanForMatches();
return true;
}
}));
There are quite a few ways to do what you're looking for depending on how you have your grid set up. Post up how you are animating whatever it is so I can take a look. Basically, you need to know exactly when it is done animating so that you can fire off your scan method again.

Can't play gif when using freeTTS Voices - Java

I am using freeTTS to speak out some text, in the background i want a animated gif to keep playing
When i try this: as soon as the voice starts speaking, the image in background gets hanged even if i keep it in some other JFrame... and after the speech is completed it starts moving. I want it to run properly without pauses.
I am placing a animated gif in a label by importing it to my application and changing the icon to that image in label' properties.
Edit
Here is my code:
private void RandomjBActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) {
Voice voice;
voice = voiceManager.getVoice(VOICENAME);
voice.allocate();
voice.speak("Daksh");
}
I am actually using a lot of setVisible, setText, declaration of integers, calculating on them but i have removed them to simplify the code for you to understand. Still it gives the same problem if executed.
The button 'RandomjB' is clicked from another button by the following code:
final Timer timer = new Timer(zad, new ActionListener() {
int tick = 0;
#Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
System.out.println("Success" + ++tick);
RandomjB.doClick();
final int col = Integer.parseInt(t3.getText());;
if (tick >= col) {
((Timer) e.getSource()).stop();
for(int g=0; g<col; g++){
jButton2.setVisible(true); // Check Button -> Visible
}
}
}
});
timer.setInitialDelay(0);
System.out.format("About to schedule task.%n");
timer.start();
System.out.format("Task scheduled.%n");

It is hard to tell without the code, I however assume that you loop the speech synthesis within the one and only Swing-Thread and therefore block all kind of window updates as long as the speech loop is in progress.
As stated by Shaun Wild: you need to use a second Thread for the speech loop.

You may want to do some research on Threads and Concurrency
These allow two things to operate simultaneously, this is just my assumption.
Assuming that you instantiate some kind of class for the FreeTTS you may want to do something like this
FreeTTSClass tts;
new Thread(new Runnable(){
public void run(){
tts = new FreeTTSClass();
}
}).start();

Fest slows down while testing with swingx jxtreetable

I am not sure how to explain this. But I'll try.. Fest slows down to crawl while working with JXTreeTable of swingx. It doesn't slow down initially. It works fine for a while, but after a while when the same actions are repeated it slows down badly.
I have raised a bug for this in github. Please tell me if this is something that I am doing wrong instead. I am not able to reproduce the problem when I tried to create an SSCCE.
Anyway, here's a video of it slowing down.
http://screencast.com/t/liNttCw2In0w
At times 0.39s to 0.40 a set of operations are performed. These are done when there is one row in the JXTreeTable.
At time 0.49 to end of recording the same operation is repeated but there are now 3 rows in the table, it takes very long for the mouse to click.
I have attached a screenshot taken at the time when fest slows down, which attempts to explain it more
This is the code that does the work:
Step 1) Selecting a node from the tree is done as below:
JTreeFixture folioTreeFixture = importShareholders.panel("treePanel").tree("folioTree");
folioTreeFixture.separator("~");
folioTreeFixture.selectPath(new StringWrapper("Shareholders", true)+"~"+
(ShareType.isEquity(shareType) ? new StringWrapper("Equity Folios", true) : new StringWrapper("Preference Folios", true))+"~"+
new FolioTreeRep(folio.getName(),folioNo, shareType).toString());
Step 2) Searching and selecting a row from the JXTreeTable
int selectRow=-1;
JTableFixture table=importShareholders.table("historyTable");
for(int i=0;i<table.rowCount();i++){
String certificateNumber = table.cell(TableCell.row(i).column(ShareholderHistoryTable.columnIndex(ShareholderHistoryTable.CERT_NO))).value();
String remarks=table.cell(TableCell.row(i).column(ShareholderHistoryTable.columnIndex(ShareholderHistoryTable.REMARKS))).value();
if(StringUtils.isEmpty(remarks) && StringUtils.isNotEmpty(certificateNumber) && Integer.parseInt(certificateNumber)==certNo){
selectRow=i;
break;
}
}
if(selectRow==-1){
fail("Couldn't find certificate number to transfer");
}
Step 3) Showing the pop up menu and clicking the row
table.showPopupMenuAt(TableCell.row(selectRow).column(0)).menuItem("btnTransfer").click();
I am not sure why its slowing down. Please let me know if there is any more info I can help with. Would be grateful for some help in solving the problem
I have profiled the application and I dont find anything untoward happening. I dont have a lot of experience profiling applications. I would be grateful if someone could have a second look at this. I profiled it with yourkit and have uploaded the snapshot dump here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/dh976v01q9c3sgj/ImportShareholderData.shouldTransferAndSplit-2013-06-14-shutdown.snapshot.zip
Any help will be greatly appreciated..
EDIT:
I think I forgot to mention the same thing works when I do it manually. It only slows down with fest. That leads me to believe that there is an issue with fest maybe?
Sorry about that.
EDIT 2:
As request by Marcin (sorry for the delay Marcin).. Here's the code when the first row is getting split
public List<Integer> splitRowEqually(ShareType shareType, String date, int folioNo, int certNo, int... certnos) throws NoSuchFieldException, TorqueException {
//select a tree node
selectFolioInTree(shareType, folioNo);
Pause.pause(new Condition("Wait until tab is created") {
#Override
public boolean test() {
return importShareholders.tabbedPane().tabTitles().length>0;
}
});
//select a row on the table to split
int row=selectRowWithCertNunber(certNo);
List<Integer> rowsIndexes=new ArrayList<Integer>();
JTableFixture table = importShareholders.table();
//show popup menu on that row and select split
table.showPopupMenuAt(row(row).column(columnIndex(TRANS_TYPE))).menuItem("btnSplit").click();
DialogFixture splitDialog=FinderUtilities.getDialogWithTitle("Split Share Certificate");
splitDialog.textBox("tfDateOfSplit").setText(date);
int noOfShares= Integer.parseInt(table.cell(row(row).column(columnIndex(NO_OF_SHARES))).value());
int distFrom= Integer.parseInt(table.cell(row(row).column(columnIndex(DIST_NO_FROM))).value());
int distTo= Integer.parseInt(table.cell(row(row).column(columnIndex(DIST_NO_TO))).value());
//split the row into the number of times decided by the certnos array
int noOfSharesInEachSplit=noOfShares/certnos.length;
for(int i=0;i<certnos.length;i++){
int distToInSplit = distFrom + noOfSharesInEachSplit-1;
enterSplitRowDetails(splitDialog, certnos[i], distFrom, distToInSplit<=distTo ? distToInSplit : distTo);
distFrom=distToInSplit+1;
rowsIndexes.add(row++);
}
splitDialog.button("btnSplit").click();
return rowsIndexes;
}
//selects a node from the left hand side tree
public void selectFolioInTree(final ShareType shareType,final int folioNo) throws TorqueException {
JTreeFixture folioTreeFixture = importShareholders.panel("treePanel").tree("folioTree");
folioTreeFixture.separator("~");
// I use these wrapper classes - StringWrapper and FolioTreeRep, so that I can get a html
// string for the tree node like <html><b>Shareholder</b></html>
String treePath = new StringWrapper("Shareholders", true) + "~" +
(ShareType.isEquity(shareType) ? new StringWrapper("Equity Folios", true) : new StringWrapper("Preference Folios", true)) + "~" +
new FolioTreeRep(mapOfFolioNames.get(folioNo), folioNo, shareType).toString();
folioTreeFixture.clickPath(treePath);
}
//search the table for a row that contains the cert no provided in the Certificate Number column.
private int selectRowWithCertNunber(int certNo) throws NoSuchFieldException {
int selectRow=-1;
JTableFixture table=importShareholders.table("historyTable");
for(int i=0;i<table.rowCount();i++){
String certificateNumber = table.cell(row(i).column(columnIndex(CERT_NO))).value();
String remarks=table.cell(row(i).column(columnIndex(REMARKS))).value();
if(StringUtils.isEmpty(remarks) && StringUtils.isNotEmpty(certificateNumber)
&& Integer.parseInt(certificateNumber)==certNo){
selectRow=i;
break;
}
}
if(selectRow==-1){
fail("Couldn't find certificate number to transfer");
}
return selectRow;
}
// enter details on the table in the SplitDialog
private void enterSplitRowDetails(DialogFixture splitDialog, int cert, int distFrom, int distTo) {
splitDialog.button("btnAdd").click();
int row = splitDialog.table().rowCount();
splitDialog.table().enterValue(row(row - 1).column(0), String.valueOf(cert));
splitDialog.table().enterValue(row(row - 1).column(1), String.valueOf(distFrom));
splitDialog.table().enterValue(row(row - 1).column(2), String.valueOf(distTo));
}

Emm... It is quite interesting question;
I suppose the question contains less really required details especially the robot integration and IO solutions details so I cannot just give you a proper answer...
Anyway, I'll try to analyze the problem in voice a little bit in my way...
First. According to your screenshot comments, I can notice that all "30s pauses or so" occur on some, as I can get it, stream reading process "select/search" (your app gets some data to output etc). So maybe it is much deeper than you think because it is probably thread problem;
I couldn't find the GuiQuery/GuiTask/GuiActionRunne classes usage in your code snippets so I may suggest the "synch problem" may take place in the mentioned case...
Second. OK... If it is still the thread problem I may suggest the robot and IO solutions are both in some ONE thread (the Main thread or something) because, according to your tips as "At times 0.39s to 0.40 a set of operations are performed. These are done when there is one row in the JXTreeTable." ... GUI is waiting for some process to be completed...
Third.
And again... According to this issue as
"It is recommended to turn on an automated check to verify that all
Swing components updates are done in Swing’s EDT (Event Dispatcher
Thread). For those unfamiliar with the EDT, it is responsible for
handling and updating all Swing widgets in a separate thread, causing
that the application never loses responsiveness to user gestures (just
in short, more about the EDT here). To do that, we add the following
hook to the test:"
import org.fest.swing.edt.FailOnThreadViolationRepaintManager;
import org.junit.BeforeClass;
...
#BeforeClass
public static void setUpOnce() {
FailOnThreadViolationRepaintManager.install();
}
Next step is to launch the frame or dialog. As JUnit runs in its own
thread, we must launch the frame or dialog through Fest, to ensure,
again, that EDT is properly used:
import org.fest.swing.edt.GuiActionRunner;
import org.fest.swing.edt.GuiQuery;
import org.fest.swing.fixture.FrameFixture;
import org.junit.Before;
...
private FrameFixture testFrame;
private AllTypesFrame frame;
...
#Before
public void setUp() {
frame = GuiActionRunner.execute(new GuiQuery<AllTypesFrame>() {
protected AllTypesFrame executeInEDT() {
return new AllTypesFrame();
}
});
testFrame = new FrameFixture(frame);
testFrame.show();
}
... makes me think it is maybe the "thread-problem" which is described in the First and Second tips...
so, as a conclusion, I can say that maybe you have to multi-thread your test a little more because it is obviously some kind of synch problem...
P.S.
#sethu, before you start your debugging I want to point a little...
I still suspect threads conflict is taking place here (see my previous tips) because, as I may notice, your code snippets are showing static expressions usage to invoke methods like Pause.pause(...) or FinderUtilities.getDialogWithTitle(...) etc I cannot see the whole project architecture so it is hard to analyze according the represented bits but it is pretty clear the "manual testing" goes fine because action listeners react in real time but fest testing does the annoying delays because it uses some "timer" to countdown until a click emulation occurs etc and of course it is a background process which needs a separate thread... Watch debugging carefully maybe somewhere in your code UI thread and fest thread do conflict (see static methods, thread.sleep etc) the points where fest thread could block (override) the UI's one... :S By the way what method Pause.pause(...) does?
P.P.S.
If you have some additional information please comment my answer
Report if my answer helps you

I do not know what are your robot settings but you can at least try to set idleTimeout and other timeouts for the robot you use. The default timeout is 10 sec (look in org.fest.swing.core.Settings). After I decrease it (first 1000ms, next 100ms) I noticed that robot works faster.
robot().settings().idleTimeout(YOUR_TIMEOUT)
Here is my test setup and one test method. Hope is clear.
Here you have my before/after
private static int testMethodCounter = 0;
private static EmergencyAbortListener mEmergencyAbortListener;
private FrameFixture workbenchFrame;
private Robot robot2;
private static final int myIdleTimeout = 100;
#Before
public void setUp() throws Exception {
// my workaround to be able to start the app once and reuse for all tests
if (testMethodCounter == 0) {
robot2 = BasicRobot.robotWithNewAwtHierarchy();
GuiActionRunner.execute(new GuiTask() {
#Override
protected void executeInEDT() throws Throwable {
ApplicationLauncher.application(ProgramRun.class).start();
}
});
} else {
// the second test method see all before created gui components
robot2 = BasicRobot.robotWithCurrentAwtHierarchy();
}
testMethodCounter++;
robot2.settings().idleTimeout(myIdleTimeout);
workbenchFrame = WindowFinder.findFrame(FrameNames.WORKBENCH.getName()).withTimeout(10000)
.using(robot2);
}
#After
public void tearDown() {
// current window will not be closed
robot2.cleanUpWithoutDisposingWindows();
}
#Test
public void someSmokeTest() throws Exception {
Pause.pause(1000);
// perform some test specific gui actions
// here is very important moment, I need new robot because
// workbenchFrame.button(ButtonNames.SOME_BUTTON_NAME).click(); creates new dialog
// which will be avilable in AWT stack after creation
robot2.cleanUpWithoutDisposingWindows();
robot2 = BasicRobot.robotWithCurrentAwtHierarchy();
// the new Robot needs timeout setup
// without this I have long breaks between gui events
robot2.settings().idleTimeout(myIdleTimeout);
workbenchFrame.button(ButtonNames.SOME_BUTTON_NAME).click();
DialogFixture dialog = WindowFinder.findDialog("dialog2")
.withTimeout(5000).using(robot2);
// some actions on the dialog
// once again next new dialog
workbenchFrame.menuItem(MenuItemNames.NAME).click();
robot2.cleanUpWithoutDisposingWindows();
robot2 = BasicRobot.robotWithCurrentAwtHierarchy();
// and idleTimeout setup once again, new Robot needs new setup
robot2.settings().idleTimeout(myIdleTimeout);
// next actions + assertion
}

javafx animation looping

in c++ or c programming language, we know to change the cordinate we use gotoxy(x,y) and we can use looping and sleep to change the cordinate and making animation. like this;
for(x = 20; x < 25; x++){
gotoxy(x,20); cout << "*"
}
but my queston is how about in JAVAFX 2.0 programming? i'm using netbeans 7.2.
thanks for your any help.

Use the JavaFX Animation Package.
There are numerous examples in the JavaFX Animation Tutorial, as Andy pointed out in his comment.
And there is a cute example of a running horse animation loop.
The key is that you don't sleep the JavaFX application thread and you have to release control of the JavaFX thread back to the JavaFX system each time you update something and want it rendered. The JavaFX animation classes take care of these things for you so that you don't have to worry about it. If you just loop like you do in the sample code from your question, JavaFX will just render the scene once after your loop has completed and you will never see anything happen.
Here is a fairly boring example which uses a Timeline to emulate the c++ code in your question to move a dot a pixel every 400 milliseconds.
import java.util.Date;
import javafx.animation.*;
import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.event.*;
import javafx.scene.*;
import javafx.scene.shape.Circle;
import javafx.stage.Stage;
import javafx.util.Duration;
/** Simple JavaFX Animation Sample. */
public class AnimationSample extends Application {
private int x = 20;
private String status = "";
private final Circle dot = new Circle(20, 20, 3);
private final TimeCounter counter = new TimeCounter();
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { launch(args); }
#Override public void start(final Stage stage) throws Exception {
final Timeline timeline = new Timeline(
new KeyFrame(Duration.ZERO, new EventHandler() {
#Override public void handle(Event event) {
refreshScene();
}
}),
new KeyFrame(Duration.millis(400))
);
timeline.setCycleCount(Timeline.INDEFINITE);
stage.setScene(new Scene(new Group(dot), 50, 50));
stage.show();
counter.reset();
timeline.play();
}
private void refreshScene() {
gotoxy(x, 20);
status = "*****".equals(status) ? "*" : status + "*";
System.out.println(String.format("%7d", counter.elapsed()) + " ms " + x + " " + status);
if (x == 24) {
x = 20;
} else {
x++;
}
}
private void gotoxy(int x, int y) {
dot.setCenterX(x);
dot.setCenterY(y);
}
class TimeCounter {
private long start = new Date().getTime();
void reset() { start = new Date().getTime(); }
long elapsed() { return new Date().getTime() - start; }
}
}

There are three different options in JavaFX, depending on your needs.
The most basic one is AnimationTimer. It's equivalent to Swing's Timer. It simply contains a handle method which is called on every frame, and passed current time as argument. You probably want some internal bookkeeping so that you do not do expensive calculations every time handle is called.
Transition has an interpolate(frac) method, which gets called with values of frac between 0.0 and 1.0. It's up to you to do all UI changes you want to, based on the frac value. Both Transition and Timeline extend Animation, so you can set stuff like cycle duration, whether the Transition is reversed at end, etc.
Timeline is the most complex one. You define arbitrary amount of KeyFrames (think of states) that contain wanted properties of different Nodes, and the Timeline will do all the work for you interpolating how to animate the change between the provided values. For example, you can give a keyframe where x property of a Node is 0, and another where it's 100, and Timeline will do the animating for you.

Have look at using a Timeline Animation. It is a key component of animation in JavaFX and
is used to establish when, and in what sequence, key parts of an animation occur.
Here is an example