Develop Reference

How do you do one action through multiple event handlers in Java FX?

I am trying to make a form that does the quadratic formula. It works on command prompt, but I want it to work on a form, and for it to update the output every time you change the input. This is my form so far. There are multiple areas you can change, which are the combo box and the text fields, but I want all of them to update the labels to show an output. This is where my problem is. I do not know how to have something similar to a method that updates the labels. A simplified version of the code is below:
import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.beans.value.ChangeListener;
import javafx.beans.value.ObservableValue;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.scene.control.Label;
import javafx.scene.control.TextField;
import javafx.scene.layout.GridPane;
import javafx.stage.Stage;
public class SmallForm extends Application{
public static void main(String[] args) {
launch(args);
}
#Override
public void start(Stage primaryStage) throws Exception {
GridPane grid = new GridPane();
grid.setVgap(5);
Label lblConcatenated = new Label("");//label that will hold the concatenated string
grid.add(lblConcatenated, 0, 0);
TextField txtA = new TextField("");//Text field one
grid.add(txtA, 0, 1);
TextField txtB = new TextField("");//Text field two
grid.add(txtB, 0, 2);
txtA.textProperty().addListener(new ChangeListener<String>() { //Triggers whenever the second text field is changed
#Override public void changed(ObservableValue ov, String t, String t1) {
lblConcatenated.setText(txtA.getText() + txtB.getText());//Concatenates the text in the two text fields
}
});
txtB.textProperty().addListener(new ChangeListener<String>() {
#Override public void changed(ObservableValue ov, String t, String t1) { //Triggers whenever the second text field is changed
lblConcatenated.setText(txtA.getText() + txtB.getText());//Concatenates the text in the two text fields
}
});
Scene scene = new Scene(grid, 250, 100);
primaryStage.setScene(scene);
primaryStage.show();
}
}
My goal is to make the concatenation line only have to be written once. This would be a lot more prevalent with more code that was repeated. In command prompt this would be easily done with a method, but that doesn't work in java fx to my knowledge. I've heard the term threading used to do this, but I couldn't figure it out.
Thank you!

You could of course use a methods. You could also use the same ChangeListener<String> object for both properties.
In this case however I recommend using a binding:
lblConcatenated.textProperty().bind(txtA.textProperty().concat(txtB.textProperty()));
If you need to parse the values and do updates based on the parsed values, I recommend using a TextFormatter:
StringConverter<Double> converter = new DoubleStringConverter();
TextFormatter<Double> formatterA = new TextFormatter<>(converter, 0d);
TextFormatter<Double> formatterB = new TextFormatter<>(converter, 0d);
txtA.setTextFormatter(formatterA);
txtB.setTextFormatter(formatterB);
formatterA.valueProperty()...
The formatter values are updated when the TextField looses focus or you trigger the onAction event of the TextField.

How to scale Label within a ListView in JavaFX

I have a ListView with some Labels in it. The labels' width property is bound to the width property of the ListView but they seem to be slightly larger meaning that a horizontal scrollbar is shown on the list view. What I want is to fit the labels in the list view without the scrollbar on the bottom. I have looked at various padding and insets values on both the label and the list view but none I have found are the culprit (most are zero).
Here is an example which demonstrates the problem.
import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.scene.Node;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.scene.control.Label;
import javafx.scene.control.ListView;
import javafx.stage.Stage;
public class ListViewScrollExample extends Application {
private ListView<Node> listView;
#Override
public void start(Stage stage) throws Exception {
listView = new ListView<>();
addItem("Some quite long string to demonstrate the problem");
Scene scene = new Scene(listView);
stage.setScene(scene);
stage.show();
}
public void addItem(String item) {
Label label = new Label(item);
label.setWrapText(true);
label.maxWidthProperty().bind(listView.widthProperty());
listView.getItems().add(label);
}
public static void main(String[] args){
Application.launch(args);
}
}

The default CSS file adds padding to a ListCell (line 2316 in the current release):
.list-cell {
-fx-padding: 0.25em 0.583em 0.25em 0.583em; /* 3 7 3 7 */
}
It generally a bad idea to use Node instances as the data backing a ListView: you should use String in this example, and use the cell factory to create a label displaying the string that is configured as you need. The following seems to work for your example:
import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.beans.binding.Bindings;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.scene.control.ContentDisplay;
import javafx.scene.control.Label;
import javafx.scene.control.ListCell;
import javafx.scene.control.ListView;
import javafx.stage.Stage;
public class ListViewScrollExample extends Application {
private ListView<String> listView;
#Override
public void start(Stage stage) throws Exception {
listView = new ListView<>();
listView.getItems().add("Some quite long string to demonstrate the problem");
listView.setCellFactory(lv -> {
ListCell<String> cell = new ListCell<String>() {
private Label label = new Label();
{
label.setWrapText(true);
label.maxWidthProperty().bind(Bindings.createDoubleBinding(
() -> getWidth() - getPadding().getLeft() - getPadding().getRight() - 1,
widthProperty(), paddingProperty()));
setContentDisplay(ContentDisplay.GRAPHIC_ONLY);
}
#Override
protected void updateItem(String item, boolean empty) {
super.updateItem(item, empty);
if (empty) {
setGraphic(null);
} else {
label.setText(item);
setGraphic(label);
}
}
};
return cell ;
});
Scene scene = new Scene(listView);
stage.setScene(scene);
stage.show();
}
public static void main(String[] args){
Application.launch(args);
}
}
Here I created a list cell that displays a label as its graphic, with the text of the label set to the string to be displayed. The constructor for the cell binds the label's max width to the width of the cell, less any space required for padding. The call to setContentDisplay(ContentDisplay.GRAPHIC_ONLY) appears necessary, so the cell doesn't try to allocate any space for text.
It may be possible to do this by setting the text directly on the list cell and calling setWrapText(true) on the cell (which is, after all, also a subclass of Labeled), but I couldn't get it to work this way.

I couldn't replicate the problem but you can try the following instead of label.maxWidthProperty().bind(listView.widthProperty());
double i = Double.parseDouble(listView.widthProperty().toString());
label.setMaxWidth((i-2.0));
You can change the 2.0 to any pixel count you need to alter the screen by.

How to make a ListView selectable but not editable

so I'm writing a javafx app and I need to be able to select the cells from the list view (for copy paste purposes) but I don't want to make it editable, I mean, the content cannot be changed unless I want to (allowing it through a button, for example).
So I have the following code:
import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.collections.FXCollections;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.scene.control.ListView;
import javafx.scene.control.cell.TextFieldListCell;
import javafx.scene.layout.StackPane;
import javafx.stage.Stage;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;
public class Main extends Application {
#Override
public void start(Stage primaryStage) throws Exception{
List<String> contacts = new ArrayList<>(Arrays.asList("968787522","3424234234","2343234324"));
ListView<String> contactsList = new ListView();
contactsList.setItems(FXCollections.observableArrayList(contacts));
//this gives me the ability to edit the row as text field but I want this text field to not be editable
contactsList.setCellFactory(TextFieldListCell.forListView());
StackPane pane = new StackPane();
pane.getChildren().add(contactsList);
primaryStage.setScene(new Scene(pane, 300, 275));
primaryStage.show(); }
public static void main(String[] args) {
launch(args);
}
}
and if I set 'contactsList' as not editable, I'm not able to edit, neither select.
As you can see (image bellow),I'm editing the cell, but I want to be able to select the text(not the item), but I don't want to be able to delete characters (text selectable but not editable).

so after breaking my head off, lots of research and API reading, I came up with a solution. This does EXACTLY what I wanted to do. Here is the demo if someone needs it ;)
So the idea is, each time we want to select the content of a row we need to select the row, get the textField and set the editing to true or false, (every time).
So in the demo that I made, I placed a button so you can toggle the editing to true or false to be sure that's is working, and how is working.
Cheers.
I commented some of the code for better understanding, if you have any questions about this just let me know.
package sample;
import com.sun.javafx.scene.control.skin.VirtualFlow;
import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.application.Platform;
import javafx.collections.FXCollections;
import javafx.scene.Group;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.scene.control.*;
import javafx.scene.control.cell.TextFieldListCell;
import javafx.scene.layout.StackPane;
import javafx.stage.Stage;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;
public class Main extends Application {
private boolean editable = false;
public static IndexedCell getCell(final Control control, final int index) {
return getVirtualFlow(control).getCell(index);
}
public static VirtualFlow<?> getVirtualFlow(Control control) {
Group group = new Group();
Scene scene = new Scene(group);
Stage stage = new Stage();
if(control.getScene() == null) {
group.getChildren().setAll(control);
stage.setScene(scene);
stage.show();
}
VirtualFlow<?>flow = (VirtualFlow<?>) control.lookup("#virtual-flow");
return flow;
}
public void setEditable(ListView contactsList){
//this needs to be done since we need to run our code after the text field was rendered
//so we need to invoke our code after this happens, if not it will throw a null pointer...
Platform.runLater(() -> {
//this is one of the most important guys because javafx api says that
//TextFieldListCell.forListView() allows editing of the cell content when the cell is double-clicked,
// or when {#link ListView#edit(int)} is called.
int rowIndex = contactsList.getSelectionModel().getSelectedIndex();
contactsList.edit(rowIndex);
ListCell rootCell = (ListCell) getCell(contactsList, rowIndex);
TextField textField = (TextField) rootCell.getGraphic();
textField.setEditable(editable);
});
}
#Override
public void start(Stage primaryStage) throws Exception{
List<String> contacts = new ArrayList<>(Arrays.asList("968787522","3424234234","2343234324"));
ListView<String> contactsList = new ListView();
contactsList.setItems(FXCollections.observableArrayList(contacts));
contactsList.setEditable(true);
//this gives me the ability to edit the row as text field but I want this text field to not be editable
contactsList.setCellFactory(TextFieldListCell.forListView());
contactsList.setOnEditStart(e -> {
setEditable(contactsList);
});
StackPane pane = new StackPane();
Button editBtn = new Button("Toggle edit");
editBtn.setOnAction(event -> {
editable = !editable;
editBtn.setText("Editing = " + editable);
//to cancel any editing that might be occuring
contactsList.getSelectionModel().clearSelection();
});
pane.getChildren().addAll(contactsList,editBtn);
primaryStage.setScene(new Scene(pane, 300, 275));
primaryStage.show();
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
launch(args);
}
}

If I understand you correctly, it is not necessary to set the listview to 'not editable', as the default behaviour should suffice for your purpose. Take a look at this code, for example:
import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.event.EventHandler;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.scene.control.ListView;
import javafx.scene.input.MouseEvent;
import javafx.scene.layout.StackPane;
import javafx.stage.Stage;
public class NewFXMain extends Application {
#Override
public void start(Stage primaryStage) {
ListView listView = new ListView();
listView.getItems().addAll("one","two","three","four");
listView.setOnMouseClicked(new EventHandler<MouseEvent>() {
#Override
public void handle(MouseEvent event) {
System.out.println(listView.getSelectionModel().getSelectedItem());
}
});
StackPane root = new StackPane();
root.getChildren().add(listView);
Scene scene = new Scene(root, 300, 250);
primaryStage.setTitle("ListView Example");
primaryStage.setScene(scene);
primaryStage.show();
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
launch(args);
}
}
I changed nothing about the editable-property of the ListView, but I can select every item, without being able to edit it (in the sense of changing its value). You can easily add an EventHandler to the ListView to perform whatever operation you want to perform. You could also add an EventHandler to every cell of the ListView by manipulating the CellFactory, as shown in this answer: How to handle ListView item clicked action?

Here's what works for me:
TableView<DataBean> table = new TableView<>();
table.setItems(...); // list of some DataBean objects with dataBeanField proprty
table.setEditable(true);
TableColumn<DataBean, String> column = new TableColumn<>("SomeData");
column.setCellValueFactory(new PropertyValueFactory<DataBean, String>("dataBeanField"));
column.setCellFactory(new Callback<TableColumn<DataBean, String>, TableCell<DataBean, String>>() {
#Override
public TableCell<DataBean, String> call(TableColumn<DataBean, String> param) {
return new TextFieldTableCell<>(new DefaultStringConverter() {
private String defaultValue = "";
#Override
public String fromString(String newValue) {
return super.fromString(defaultValue);
}
#Override
public String toString(String value) {
return defaultValue = super.toString(value);
}
});
}
});

JavaFX combobox, on item clicked

My problem is as follows,
For the sake of this question I reproduced the problem in a new project.
Say I have this application with a combobox in it, there could be 1 or more items in there. And I would like it to be so that when the user clicks an item in the combobox that 'something' happens.
I produced the following code:
obsvList.add("item1");
cbTest.setOnAction(new EventHandler<ActionEvent>() {
#Override
public void handle(ActionEvent event) {
System.out.println("Item clicked");
}
});
This works when the application starts and an item is selected for the first time. This also works when there are 2 or more items in the combobox (when the user clicks item 1, then item 2, then item 1 for example)
However my problem is that when there is only 1 item in the combobox, let's say "item1". And the user reopens the combobox and clicks "item1" again then it won't redo the action.
It will only print the line "Item Clicked" when a 'new' item is clicked.
I hope it made it clear what the problem i'm experiencing is, if not please ask for clarification and I will give so where needed.
Thanks in advance!

The functionality of a combo box is to present the user with a list of options from which to choose. When you are using a control which implies selection, you should really ensure that the UI is always consistent with the option that is selected. If you do this, then it makes no sense to "repeat an action" when the user "reselects" the same option (because the UI is already in the required state). One approach to this is to use binding or listeners on the combo box's value:
import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.beans.property.SimpleStringProperty;
import javafx.beans.property.StringProperty;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.scene.control.ComboBox;
import javafx.scene.control.Label;
import javafx.scene.layout.BorderPane;
import javafx.stage.Stage;
public class ComboBoxExample extends Application {
#Override
public void start(Stage primaryStage) {
ComboBox<Item> choices = new ComboBox<>();
for (int i = 1 ; i <=3 ; i++) {
choices.getItems().add(new Item("Choice "+i, "These are the details for choice "+i));
}
Label label = new Label();
choices.valueProperty().addListener((obs, oldItem, newItem) -> {
label.textProperty().unbind();
if (newItem == null) {
label.setText("");
} else {
label.textProperty().bind(newItem.detailsProperty());
}
});
BorderPane root = new BorderPane();
root.setCenter(label);
root.setTop(choices);
Scene scene = new Scene(root, 400, 400);
primaryStage.setScene(scene);
primaryStage.show();
}
public class Item {
private final String name ;
private final StringProperty details = new SimpleStringProperty() ;
public Item(String name, String details) {
this.name = name ;
setDetails(details) ;
}
public String getName() {
return name ;
}
#Override
public String toString() {
return getName();
}
public final StringProperty detailsProperty() {
return this.details;
}
public final String getDetails() {
return this.detailsProperty().get();
}
public final void setDetails(final String details) {
this.detailsProperty().set(details);
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
launch(args);
}
}
In this case, there is never a need to repeat an action when the user "reselects" the same option, because the code always assures that the UI is consistent with what is selected anyway (there is necessarily nothing to do if the user selects the option that is already selected). By using bindings in the part of the UI showing the details (just a simple label in this case), we are assured that the UI stays up to date if the data changes externally. (Obviously in a real application, this may be far more complex, but the basic strategy is still exactly the same.)
On the other hand, functionality that requires an action to be repeated if the user selects the same functionality is better considered as presenting the user with a set of "actions". The appropriate controls for this are things like menus, toolbars with buttons, and MenuButtons.
An example of a set of repeatable actions is:
import java.util.stream.Collectors;
import java.util.stream.Stream;
import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.beans.binding.Bindings;
import javafx.beans.property.IntegerProperty;
import javafx.beans.property.SimpleIntegerProperty;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.scene.control.Label;
import javafx.scene.control.MenuButton;
import javafx.scene.control.MenuItem;
import javafx.scene.layout.BorderPane;
import javafx.stage.Stage;
public class MenuButtonExample extends Application {
#Override
public void start(Stage primaryStage) {
MenuButton menuButton = new MenuButton("Items");
Label label = new Label();
Item[] items = new Item[3];
for (int i = 1 ; i <=3 ; i++) {
items[i-1] = new Item("Item "+i);
}
for (Item item : items) {
MenuItem menuItem = new MenuItem(item.getName());
menuItem.setOnAction(e -> item.setTimesChosen(item.getTimesChosen() + 1));
menuButton.getItems().add(menuItem);
}
label.textProperty().bind(Bindings.createStringBinding(() ->
Stream.of(items)
.map(item -> String.format("%s chosen %d times", item.getName(), item.getTimesChosen()))
.collect(Collectors.joining("\n")),
Stream.of(items)
.map(Item::timesChosenProperty)
.collect(Collectors.toList()).toArray(new IntegerProperty[0])));
BorderPane root = new BorderPane();
root.setCenter(label);
root.setTop(menuButton);
Scene scene = new Scene(root, 400, 400);
primaryStage.setScene(scene);
primaryStage.show();
}
public static class Item {
private final String name ;
private final IntegerProperty timesChosen = new SimpleIntegerProperty();
public Item(String name) {
this.name = name ;
}
public String getName() {
return name ;
}
#Override
public String toString() {
return getName();
}
public final IntegerProperty timesChosenProperty() {
return this.timesChosen;
}
public final int getTimesChosen() {
return this.timesChosenProperty().get();
}
public final void setTimesChosen(final int timesChosen) {
this.timesChosenProperty().set(timesChosen);
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
launch(args);
}
}

The idea is to set a listener on the ListView pane, that appears whenever you click on the ComboBox. The ListView instance is created once the ComboBox is first loaded in the JavaFX scene. Therefore, we add a listener on the ComboBox to check when it appears on the scene, and then through the "lookup" method we get the ListView and add a listener to it.
private EventHandler<MouseEvent> cboxMouseEventHandler;
private void initComboBox() {
ComboBox<String> comboBox = new ComboBox<String>();
comboBox.getItems().add("Item 1");
comboBox.getItems().add("Item 2");
comboBox.getItems().add("Item 3");
comboBox.sceneProperty().addListener((a,oldScene,newScene) -> {
if(newScene == null || cboxMouseEventHandler != null)
return;
ListView<?> listView = (ListView<?>) comboBox.lookup(".list-view");
if(listView != null) {
cboxMouseEventHandler = (e) -> {
Platform.runLater(()-> {
String selectedValue = (String) listView.getSelectionModel().getSelectedItem();
if(selectedValue.equals("Item 1"))
System.out.println("Item 1 clicked");
});
}; // cboxMouseEventHandler
listView.addEventFilter(MouseEvent.MOUSE_PRESSED, cboxMouseEventHandler);
} // if
});
} // initComboBox

Disable all MouseEvents on the Children of a Pane

I have a Pane in which i add and remove nodes during a computation. Therefor i save a boolean which is set to true if the computation is running. of course i do some handling on starting and terminating a computation.
What i want to do now is: disable all MouseEvents on the children of the Pane if the computation starts and reenable them if the computation is terminated.
My tries until now where limited to completly remove the EventHandlers, but then i can't add them again later.
unfortunately i couldn't find a way to do this, so i hope for help here :)
Thanks in advance

Assuming you have implemented the long-running computation as a Task or Service (and if you haven't, you should probably consider doing so), you can just do something along the following lines:
Pane pane ;
// ...
Task<ResultType> computation = ... ;
pane.disableProperty().bind(computation.runningProperty());
new Thread(computation).start();
Calling setDisable(true) on a node will disable all its child nodes, so this will disable all the children of the pane, and re-enable them when the task is no longer running.
Here's an SSCCE:
import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.concurrent.Service;
import javafx.concurrent.Task;
import javafx.geometry.HPos;
import javafx.geometry.Insets;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.scene.control.Button;
import javafx.scene.control.Label;
import javafx.scene.control.TextField;
import javafx.scene.layout.ColumnConstraints;
import javafx.scene.layout.GridPane;
import javafx.scene.layout.Priority;
import javafx.stage.Stage;
public class ComputationSimulation extends Application {
#Override
public void start(Stage primaryStage) {
// text fields for input:
TextField xInput = new TextField();
TextField yInput = new TextField();
// Service for performing the computation.
// (For demo here, the computation just computes the sum of
// the two input values. Obviously this doesn't take long, so
// a random pause is inserted.)
Service<Integer> service = new Service<Integer>() {
#Override
protected Task<Integer> createTask() {
final int x = readTextField(xInput);
final int y = readTextField(yInput);
return new Task<Integer>() {
#Override
public Integer call() throws Exception {
// simulate long-running computation...
Thread.sleep((int)(Math.random() * 2000) + 1000);
// this doesn't really take much time(!):
return x + y ;
}
};
}
};
// Label to show result. Just use binding to bind to value of computation:
Label result = new Label();
result.textProperty().bind(service.valueProperty().asString());
// Button starts computation by restarting service:
Button compute = new Button("Compute");
compute.setOnAction(e -> service.restart());
// Pane to hold controls:
GridPane pane = new GridPane();
// Disable pane (and consequently all its children) when computation is running:
pane.disableProperty().bind(service.runningProperty());
// layout etc:
pane.setHgap(5);
pane.setVgap(10);
pane.addRow(0, new Label("x:"), xInput);
pane.addRow(1, new Label("y:"), yInput);
pane.addRow(2, new Label("Total:"), result);
pane.add(compute, 1, 3);
ColumnConstraints left = new ColumnConstraints();
left.setHalignment(HPos.RIGHT);
left.setHgrow(Priority.NEVER);
pane.getColumnConstraints().addAll(left, new ColumnConstraints());
pane.setPadding(new Insets(10));
Scene scene = new Scene(pane);
primaryStage.setScene(scene);
primaryStage.show();
}
// converts text in text field to an int if possible
// returns 0 if not valid text, and sets text accordingly
private int readTextField(TextField text) {
try {
return Integer.parseInt(text.getText());
} catch (NumberFormatException e) {
text.setText("0");
return 0 ;
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
launch(args);
}
}