SimpleFXML springboot javafx integration.

Spring Boot and JavaFx - A perfect team! Build your JavaFX Application with spring boot features

This small library links Spring Boot with JavaFx. Let all your view and controller classes be Spring Beans and make use of all features in the Spring Framework Universe.

Features

• MVC style inspired with JavaFX framework for reusable and decoupled UI components.
• Based on a seamless Spring Boot 2 integration with(in) the JavaFX model.
• Loosely coupled
• Zero configuration

0. Prerequisites

• You will at least need JDK 1.8 or higher.
• Spring Boot 2** via Maven

1. Installing

You can get the latest version of SimpleFXML directly from Bintray’s JCenter repository.

Maven

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>central</id>
        <name>jcenter</name>
        <url>https://jcenter.bintray.com</url>
    </repository>
</repositories>

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>edu.unsch.epis</groupId>
        <artifactId>SimpleFXML</artifactId>
        <version>1.0.0-Final</version>	
    </dependency>
<dependencies>

gradle

repositories {
    jcenter()
}

dependencies {
    compile 'edu.unsch.epis:SimpleFXML:1.0.0-Final'
}

**NOTE: if use java 11 or higher, JavaFX was removed from the SDK. It is now in its own separate module, and if you want to use it in your application you will need to specifically include it.

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.openjfx</groupId>
    <artifactId>javafx-controls</artifactId>
    <version>11</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.openjfx</groupId>
    <artifactId>javafx-fxml</artifactId>
    <version>11</version>
</dependency>
etc...

2. Generate your GUI with FXML using SceneBuilder

You find SceneBuilder here: http://gluonhq.com/open-source/scene-builder/ Put the files in a folder called fxml in your classpath, so that Spring's resource loader can find them. Hint: Create a dedicated jar with all FXML, css and resource files and add it as a dependency using your preferred tooling (Maven, Gradle...).

<Pane maxHeight="-Infinity" maxWidth="-Infinity" minHeight="-Infinity" minWidth="-Infinity" prefHeight="400.0" prefWidth="600.0" xmlns="http://javafx.com/javafx/8.0.112" xmlns:fx="http://javafx.com/fxml/1" fx:controller="example.HelloworldController">
   <children>
      <Label fx:id="helloLabel" layoutX="99.0" layoutY="109.0" prefHeight="34.0" prefWidth="394.0" text="Hello World!">
         <font>
            <Font size="26.0" />
         </font>
      </Label>
      <TextField fx:id="nameField" layoutX="99.0" layoutY="162.0" prefHeight="26.0" prefWidth="234.0" />
      <Button fx:id="helloButton" layoutX="347.0" layoutY="162.0" mnemonicParsing="false" onAction="#setHelloText" text="Button" />
   </children>
</Pane>

3. Create your view classes

Extend your view class from AbstractFxmlView and annotate it with @FXView. Name your class View. E.g. given your FXML-file is named somelist.fxml the corresponding view class is SomeListView. When you want to name your class different, you need to add the fxml file name as value to your @FXView annotation: @FXView("/myniceview.fxml")

@FXView
public class HelloworldView extends AbstractFxmlView {

}

4. Create the Controller

Create your controller class for your view as you defined it in the fxml file: fx:controller="my.example.MyCoolController" and annotate MyCoolController with @FXController.

@FXController
public class HelloworldController {

    @FXML
    private Label helloLabel;
  
    @FXML
    private TextField nameField;
    
    // Be aware: This is a Spring bean. So we can do the following:
    @Autowired
    private AwesomeActionService actionService;
    
    @FXML
    private void setHelloText(final Event event) {
       final String textToBeShown = actionService.processName(nameField.getText());
       helloLabel.setText(textToBeShown); 
    }
}

The example service class.

public interface AwesomeActionService {
    String processName(String name);
}

@Component
public class DefaultAwesomeActionService implements AwesomeActionService {

    @Override
    public String processName(final String name) {       
            return "Hello World from JavaFX!";        
    }
}

5. Create a Starter class

Create a starter class extending FxApplication. Annotate this one with @SpringBootApplication and call launchApp() from the main method.

@SpringBootApplication
public class Main extends FxApplication{

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        launch(Main.class, HelloworldView.class, args);
    }
}

6. Style your views

You have multiple ways to style your view: First on is adding your JavaFX-css with SceneBuilder (the common JavaFX-way). Second is to add one or more css-files to the @FXView annotation: @FXView(css={"/css/main.css", "/css/other.css"}). Or third possibility: Add a property javafx.css=/global.css to your application.properties (or application.yaml).

7. Adding resource bundles to the view

To i18n your application you can either add your properties files inside the package of your view class or add a bundle parameter to the @FXView annotation. Example: Your View is named foo.myapp.main.CoolView.class then your properties should be in the package foo.myapp.main as: cool.properties (default and fallback) and cool_de.properties (german), cool_fr.properties (french) etc. Or if you want to have your files reside in a different location (e.g. /i18n/messages_*.properties) then add your bundle by adding @FXView(bundle = "i18n.messages") Be aware of the dot because the FXMLLoader assumes that this is a classpath.