Mastering JavaFX 8 Controls

338 Pages·2014·14.6 MB·English

by  Ebbers

Oracle TIGHT / Mastering JavaFX 8 Controls / Hendrik Ebbers / 377-3/
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Oracle TIGHT / Mastering JavaFX 8 Controls / Hendrik Ebbers / 377-3
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eBook 377-3 CR_pg.indd 1 6/5/14 5:31 PM
Oracle TIGHT / Mastering JavaFX 8 Controls / Hendrik Ebbers / 377-3
For Silke—Because you helped me every day writing this book. I wrote this
book in my free time, so there were weeks where I completely
disappeared from normal home life. You managed everything alone,
and in addition you backed me when I became frustrated
about this project. Without you, I couldn’t have managed this.
For the JavaFX community—Because without the awesome community,
I would have never been in the position to write this book.
For my father—Because you taught me that you can create everything you
imagine if you have enough courage to take hold of it.
For all of my friends and family—Because you heard me talking about this
book too many times but still listened to me.
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About the Author
Hendrik Ebbers is senior Java architect at Materna GmbH in Dortmund, Germany.
His main focus besides research and development is primarily in the areas of
JavaFX, middleware, and DevOps. Additionally, Hendrik is founder and leader of
the Java User Group Dortmund and gives talks and presentations in user groups
and international conferences. He blogs about UI-related topics at www.guigarage
.com (or on Twitter @hendrikEbbers) and contributes to some open source projects
such as DataFX, BoxFX, AquaFX, and Vagrant-Binding.
About the Technical Editor
Simon Ritter works as a Java technology evangelist for Oracle Corporation and
Sun Microsystems before that. He has been developing Java code since JDK 1.0
and has been involved in JavaFX since its launch as a scripting language.
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Contents
Introduction ......................................................... ix
1 The History of Java UI Toolkits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Java SE UI Toolkits .................................................... 2
AWT ......................................................... 2
Java Foundation Classes and the Emergence of Swing .................... 3
Swing ........................................................ 3
Additional UI Toolkits .................................................. 5
SWT ......................................................... 5
Apache Flex ................................................... 5
The Way to JavaFX .................................................... 5
From F3 to JavaFX 8 ............................................. 6
JavaFX Compared to HTML5
and Web-Based Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Java-Based Web Frameworks ...................................... 8
Summary ........................................................... 8
2 JavaFX Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Your First JavaFX Application ............................................ 10
JavaFX Application Life Cycle ...................................... 12
Defining the Main Window by Using the Stage Class .................... 12
The Scene Graph ............................................... 18
Technical Design of the JavaFX Toolkit ..................................... 19
The Native Layer ................................................ 19
Private API Layer ................................................ 20
Public API Layer ................................................ 20
JavaFX Public APIs .................................................... 20
Application and Life Cycle ........................................ 20
Stage API ..................................................... 20
Scene Graph and Controls ........................................ 20
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Event Handling ................................................. 21
Property API ................................................... 22
Collections .................................................... 23
Concurrent API ................................................. 24
Animations .................................................... 24
FXML ........................................................ 25
CSS Support ................................................... 25
Printing ....................................................... 26
Interoperability with Swing ........................................ 26
Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Scene Builder .................................................. 27
Scenic View ................................................... 27
FX Experience Tools ............................................. 28
Deployment/Native Builds .............................................. 29
JavaFX Goes Polyglott .................................................. 30
GroovyFX ..................................................... 30
ScalaFX ...................................................... 31
JavaFX and Nashorn ............................................. 32
Summary ........................................................... 33
3 The Scene Graph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Using and Integrating the Scene Graph in a JavaFX Application .................. 36
The Scene Class ...................................................... 37
Event Handling ....................................................... 44
Node Types ......................................................... 46
Primitive Nodes ................................................ 46
LayoutPanes ................................................... 48
Complex Nodes ................................................ 49
Node Basics ......................................................... 50
FXML .............................................................. 56
Summary ........................................................... 60
4 Laying Out and Transforming Nodes in the Scene Graph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Adding Some Transformations ............................................ 62
Adding a Third Dimension ........................................ 66
Extended Transformation APIs ...................................... 66
Laying Out Nodes .................................................... 70
Creating a Custom Pane .......................................... 71
The Visual Structure of a Region .................................... 74
Extended Internal Layout Mechanisms ............................... 81
Additional Layout Mechanisms ..................................... 85
The javafx.geometry Package ...................................... 85
Working with Constraints ......................................... 85
Combining Transforms and Layout ........................................ 86
Accessing the Bounds of a Node ................................... 88
Summary ........................................................... 88
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5 JavaFX Basic Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
The Control Class ..................................................... 90
Basic Controls ....................................................... 91
Labeled Controls ............................................... 95
Controls for Text Input ........................................... 101
Slider ........................................................ 106
ProgressIndicator and ProgressBar .................................. 110
Tooltip of a Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Using Menus in JavaFX ................................................. 114
Using Separators ................................................ 117
Creating an Application with Basic Controls ................................. 119
Summary ........................................................... 126
6 Additional JavaFX Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Controls with a Data Model ............................................. 128
ComboBox .................................................... 128
ListView ...................................................... 134
TableView .................................................... 150
TreeView ..................................................... 165
TreeTableView ................................................. 171
Sorting and Filtering Data ......................................... 173
Controls That Act as Containers .......................................... 176
Additional Controls ................................................... 181
HTMLEditor ......................................................... 181
DatePicker .................................................... 183
ColorPicker ................................................... 185
An Interview with Jonathan Giles, Engineer on the JavaFX Team, Oracle . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Summary ........................................................... 190
7 Additional JavaFX Nodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Charts .............................................................. 192
WebView ........................................................... 195
Canvas ....................................................... 202
ImageView .......................................................... 206
MediaView .......................................................... 210
Summary ........................................................... 211
8 Integrating JavaFX, Swing, and SWT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Combining JavaFX and Swing ............................................ 214
Using the JFXPanel .................................................... 214
Using the SwingNode ............................................ 219
Using the Experimental Single-Thread Mode .......................... 221
Pros and Cons of the Integration .................................... 222
Combining JavaFX and SWT ............................................. 223
Using the FXCanvas ............................................. 223
Summary ........................................................... 226
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9 Styling a Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Using Themes to Style an Application ...................................... 228
CSS Basics .......................................................... 230
CSS in JavaFX ........................................................ 232
Using Selectors ................................................. 237
Summary of the Cascading Feature .................................. 247
Styling a Chart ................................................. 248
Best Practices for Styling Applications and Controls ..................... 250
An Interview with Claudine Zillmann, software developer at maredit GmbH . . . . . . . 254
Summary ........................................................... 257
10 Custom Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
The Structure of a Control ............................................... 260
The Skin ...................................................... 261
The SkinBase Class .............................................. 262
Creating a Custom Control .............................................. 264
Adding Event Handling ........................................... 270
Styling the Control .............................................. 272
An Interview with Gerrit Grunwald, Canoo Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
Summary ........................................................... 303
A JavaFX Resources and Where to Go from Here . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
Make Your UI Shine ................................................... 306
JavaFX-Related Middleware and Application Frameworks ....................... 306
DataFX ....................................................... 307
OpenDolphin .................................................. 308
Best of Open Source Projects ............................................ 308
Important JavaFX Links ................................................. 309
JavaFX Books ........................................................ 309
JavaFX Application .................................................... 310
Summary ........................................................... 310
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
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Introduction
JavaFX from a Developer’s Point of View
My background is in a lot of Swing development and web application creation. For web
applications, I mostly used plain HTML or JSF to create the views, and I did some little
applications with most of the other technologies (Adobe Flex, Flash, Android, Wicket,
GWT, and so on) to learn more about these UI toolkits over the years.
For me, JavaFX is a perfect combination of most of the best practices that have come out
of these technologies. For a Swing developer, most of the basic JavaFX APIs are easy to learn
because the main concepts seem to be similar when looking at the framework. Under the
hood, most of the technologies are different, but you can structure an application in a
better way by using FXML and CSS, for example. Compared to HTML applications, JavaFX
development is much easier for me because theoretically, you can do whatever you want
and don’t need to think about cross-browser behavior and all that stuff. You can create the
complete view by using What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editors like Scene
Builder and use your favorite Java IDE for development.
JavaFX offers a small learning curve, so you’ll be able to create your first applications
quickly. In addition, because of the good documentation and structure of the APIs, you
probably won’t make as many mistakes as you might have when learning Swing or HTML,
for example. But, there are some places where you need to know the underlying technology
well, and some parts are hard when you experiment the first time with them. When creating
my first custom JavaFX control, I needed a lot of help to understand all the concepts and
APIs involved. That was before JavaFX 8, though, and most of the documentation that is
available today didn’t exist. For me, as a Java developer, JavaFX is the best choice to develop
applications that don’t need to be captured in a browser.
With the release of Java 8, JavaFX is the default UI toolkit for Java. In this book, you
will learn how to master JavaFX, especially the control API, to create applications based
on these technologies. You can get all the scripts and programs featured in this book online
(see the section “Retrieving the Examples” for details).
ix
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