I was just given notice that we were allowed to share an internal FXML document originally written by Greg Brown, a member of the JavaFX controls team. What follows is a painfully slow (and very labour intensive!) PDF to HTML conversion We’ve updated the document, and instead of re-translating it every time, I will now just be posting the PDF file directly. If you find any mistakes, please leave a comment (or email me), and I’ll update the document. I also have to add the normal disclaimers: this is a draft document, and it is likely that it may change leading up to the GA release of JavaFX 2.0. With that out of the way, read on and enjoy! 🙂
Download the latest 'Introducing FXML' document
In case you’re wondering what FXML is, FXML is a scriptable, XML-based markup language for constructing Java object graphs. It provides a convenient alternative to constructing such graphs in procedural code, and is ideally suited to defining the user interface of a JavaFX application, since the hierarchical structure of an XML document closely parallels the structure of the JavaFX scene graph.
It’s look cool
What a terrible mistake replacing JavaFX Script with all this *XMLSWING2FX*…
As I’ve stressed a number of times already, FXML is purely optional. If you don’t want to write your UI in FXML, then you are free to use Java, any other JVM-based language, a wrapper like GroovyFX, or Visage, which is a continuation of the JavaFX Script project. You have far more options on how to write rich user interfaces with JavaFX 2.0 than you ever did in JavaFX 1.3 and earlier, where the only option was JavaFX Script.
yes,I totally agree that it just optional to write ui 🙂
The FXML approach is MUCH better than the old JavaFX scripting methodology. A true SoC should consist of a presentation layer (much like FXML) that is not convoluted with script (like JavaFX 1.x). With FXML designers can now take part in the process of a JavaFX application life-cycle minimizing the efforts of developers. I applaud the vision and perseverance for such an enterprise ready implementation. This will truly improve development time and enhance the developers experience. Thank you Jonathan (and everyone else involved)!
“A true SoC should consist of a presentation”…who are you to say what it “should” consist of!? Do you know of every potential use case and development scenario? That is such an arrogant view point!
Now JavaFX with FXML looks like Apache Pivot (http://pivot.apache.org/), but still it’s really raw product to build an application and I’m not even talking about cross-platform applications.
Wish you all good luck and waiting for linux version of javafx 😉
A propos Pivot: the Lead of the Pivot project is Greg Brown.
Funnily one Greg Brown is also working for Oracle on JFX:
http://javafx-jira.kenai.com/secure/ViewProfile.jspa?name=gk_brown
I am curious if this is the same person 🙂
Yep, same guy 🙂
Cool!!!! 🙂
When will this be released ?
FXML is part of JavaFX 2.0 beta b37, which came out last week.
Really cool stuff so many options available to create UI great!!!!!!!!!
Any body know how to enable and disable prism stack? i want to use java2D instead of prism because on my system there is no graphics card and when i run javafx program prism uses software rendering
according to http://download.oracle.com/javafx/2.0/architecture/jfxpub-architecture.htm [Graphics System] Prism falls back to Java2D if there is no hardware acceleration available.
Prism software uses Java2D. There are a few older graphics cards where Java2D supports hardware acceleration but prism does not. In those cases Prism software uses Java2D with hardware acceleration.
The bottom line is Prism software is just Java2D so will never be faster or slower than Java2D.
i got these information when i run javafx 2 program
WARNING : bad driver vesrion detected, device disabled !
Please update graphics drivers to the latest.
*** Fallback to Prism SW pipeline
due to software rendering it eats 100% of my CPU cycles when i use javafx animations i done complex animations on javafx1.3.1 it donot eats 100% of CPU what is the problem here same system same drivers
Can you run with -Dprism.verbose=true and send the output. Will see what I can find out
i got this information
Prism pipeline init order: d3d j2d
Using openpisces for shapes, t2k for text rasterization
Using dirty region optimizations
Prism pipeline name = com.sun.prism.d3d.D3DPipeline
Loading D3D native library …
succeeded.
WARNING : bad driver vesrion detected, device disabled !
Please update graphics drivers to the latest.
OS Information:
Windows XP build 2600
D3D Driver Information:
S3 Graphics ProSavageDDR
\\.\DISPLAY1
Driver s3gnb.dll, version 6.14.10.12
Pixel Shader version 0.0
Device : ven_5333, dev_8D04, subsys_8D045333
Direct3D initialization failed
(X) Got class = class com.sun.prism.d3d.D3DPipeline
D3DPipeline:getInstance(), d3dEnabled=false
Prism pipeline name = com.sun.prism.j2d.J2DPipeline
(X) Got class = class com.sun.prism.j2d.J2DPipeline
Initialized prism pipeline: com.sun.prism.j2d.J2DPipeline
RESIZE: 792218871392 w: 500 h: 500
Glass native format: 1
GraphicsPipeline.createPipeline: error initializing pipeline com.sun.prism.d3d.D3DPipeline
*** Fallback to Prism SW pipeline
RESIZE: 819156364007 w: 102 h: 40
RESIZE: 819689013547 w: 102 h: 40
RESIZE: 820950469961 w: 102 h: 40
QuantumRenderer: shutdown
i updated directx but facing same problem i am doing fading animation on tableview, on javafx 1.3.1 performance is very good
Look at RT-14415.
Try to update your graphic card driver to the latest one.
Hope this helps.
As i mentioned that i have no graphics card installed on my system yesterday i updated directx and my display drivers but facing same problem. i think prism searches for graphics card if it doesn’t find then it switches to software rendering
You have a graphics chip its just on the main board not a separate graphics card. My feeling is its too old to support JFX hardware acceleration but I have contacted our graphics team to check.
I recommend that you setCache(true) on the TableView before animating and set it back to false when you are done. That should make it much faster.
I think jasper you are right i am using old machine and maybe prism does not supports my graphics card thanks for help
FXML looks like a direct (slightly modified) copy of Apache Pivot’s BXML. The involved classes (BeanAdapter etc.) and Annotations @BXML, @Bindable etc. seem to be almost the same. I wonder whether Oracle gives some credit to Apache, and if yes, where?
Oh, I see it now: Greg Brown (original author of Pivot) is on the JavaFX team!
It looks great. I can imagine the possibilities..
However I would like to know what problems are you trying to solve or use cases you are targeting?
Great work, cheers.
A good example of a use case for FXML is in tooling support. If tools can create and read FXML, then there is a consistent base for building and exchanging JavaFX user interfaces between a team of developers.
Wanna guess what our internal tools read and write? 🙂
In addition to tools: web developers like doing layout in markup (I was somewhat surprised by this one, but really we’ve gotten good feedback internally from web developers). Systems integrators like to be able to modify the UI without having to recompile (essential in some types of deployments with large complicated applications). The separation of concerns (code vs. layout) helps with readability and maintainability. Various tools output XML files for UI layout — XSLT can be used to munge this into some FXML that can then be loaded & run. Server side software can dynamically build and serve FXML files to an application which can then load these dynamically built forms. etc.
Hey Guys,
the feature “expression binding” doesn’t really work…
My testcase:
The (unexpected) result:
Exception in Application start method
Exception in thread “main” java.lang.RuntimeException: Exception in Application start method
at com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl.launchApplication1(LauncherImpl.java:202)
at com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl.access$000(LauncherImpl.java:17)
at com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl$1.run(LauncherImpl.java:55)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:662)
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Illegal identifier character: ‘{‘.
at javafx.fxml.BeanAdapter.parsePath(BeanAdapter.java:1005)
at javafx.fxml.BeanAdapter.parsePath(BeanAdapter.java:927)
at javafx.fxml.BeanAdapter.get(BeanAdapter.java:736)
at javafx.fxml.expression.VariableExpression.evaluate(VariableExpression.java:45)
at javafx.fxml.FXMLLoader.resolveExpressions(FXMLLoader.java:1700)
at javafx.fxml.FXMLLoader.load(FXMLLoader.java:1337)
at javafx.fxml.FXMLLoader.load(FXMLLoader.java:1834)
at javafx.fxml.FXMLLoader.load(FXMLLoader.java:1819)
at javafx.fxml.FXMLLoader.load(FXMLLoader.java:1814)
at javafxapplication2.JavaFXApplication2.start(JavaFXApplication2.java:33)
at com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl$4.run(LauncherImpl.java:163)
at com.sun.javafx.application.PlatformImpl$4.run(PlatformImpl.java:124)
at com.sun.javafx.application.PlatformImpl$3.run(PlatformImpl.java:100)
at com.sun.glass.ui.win.WinApplication._runLoop(Native Method)
at com.sun.glass.ui.win.WinApplication.access$100(WinApplication.java:29)
at com.sun.glass.ui.win.WinApplication$1$1.run(WinApplication.java:49)
… 1 more
It works fine without expression binding.
Is it a bug?
Regards, Niklas
less-than = [
greater-than = ]
[TestControl xmlns:fx=”http://javafx.com/fxml”]
[top]
[TextBox fx:id=”inputTest1″ text=”Test 1″/]
[/top]
[bottom]
[TextBox fx:id=”inputTest2″ text=”${inputTest1.text}”/]
[/bottom]
[/TestControl]
TestControl extends BorderPane.
RT-15522
.. and implements Bindable.
This looks fantastic. Its VERY similar to GWT UIBinder, which is a good thing. I suddenly find myself very interested (again) in JavaFX. Good work!
RIP FXD 🙁 ….
What is this good for ? Is there IDE support and therefor debugging possibilities ?
And then in the Scrptiing part of the doc: any scriptiing LANGUAGE is more compact on action listeners. So why not simply stay with the language itself right away. I do not get the greatness, besides that I have to maintain something additionally outside the compiler !?!?
The only advantage I see is that I am able to change the layout without re-compilation. But maybe I don’t get it and someone can help me out, e.g. give me some good reasons and examples to use this so it makes sense, more than codeing.
Jonathan wrote:
“since the hierarchical structure of an XML document closely parallels the structure of the JavaFX scene graph”
It’s indeed very close in nearly all cases. But what about FileChoosers. This is a control that needs to be instantiated but isn’t an element of the scene graph. How would that get expressed?
Hi André,
There are a couple of ways you could do this. One is to use an block to create objects that live outside the scenegraph. Another is to do it programmatically in an block.
Hope this helps,
Greg
Woow….it’s All awesome
but make me confuse ,hehehe
any way ,yes its only option to make UI ,so just choose the one do you like .. 🙂
FXML can be compiled in a future?
This is for performance reason.
Absolutely. I’m not sure if it made it in this release though. It is just XML, so we’re thinking about using some existing binary XML solutions.
Hi Giles,
I did what u said for images but it makes me a null pointer exception, could u help me?
less-than = [
greater-than = ]
[ImageView fx:id=”logo” translateX=”10″ translateY=”10″ image=”@auth.png”/]
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
at javafx.fxml.BeanAdapter.coerce(BeanAdapter.java:699)
Bye Flex
when will netbeans support for FXML will be available?
On page number… eh, ok. In paragraph numb… eh… In the paragraph on initializing controllers, there is an instance variable button which is never initialized. Is this done automagically or should there be a @FXML annotation before the variable? (Since all the controller stuff is for the next release, I cannot test it myself.)
Good catch. The button variable is injected by the loader. Because it is public, it does not require an annotation.
We’ll post an updated document shortly.
Can multiple controllers be defined in an FXML? It seems practical to be able to have controllers specific for certain includes.
Yes, each include can have its own controller.
For those watching the comments on this post – I’ve just posted an updated version of the PDF. Hopefully it might answer more of your questions.
Hello,
URL location = getClass().getResource(“example.fxml”);
ResourceBundle resources = ResourceBundle.getBundle(“com.foo.example”);
FXMLLoader fxmlLoader = new FXMLLoader();
fxmlLoader.setLocation(location);
fxmlLoader.setResources(resources);
fxmlLoader.setBuilderFactory(new JavaFXBuilderFactory());
This code fails to compile as long as fxmlLoader.setResources(…) accepts only Resources class. Could you please update your example?
Thanks,
Illya
It’s great for enterprise software! I will test it now…
Is the PDF link broken? I tried it just now, but it’s saying “Page not found.”
Indeed – I updated one link but not the other when I updated the document recently. To save me from doing this in the future I removed the link in the text – click the PDF image to download the latest version of this document. Thanks!
Update: The “posting the PDF file directly” link is still pointing to the July (07) version. The other link is working fine.
Thank you for this excellent Introducing FXML document. It’s awesome!
why the tag is necessary, will there be other places where a child can be added?
Which tag is that? Do you mean the “children” child element of a pane?
Yes, there may be other places where a child element can be added. A class can expose any number of sub-element collections. The @DefaultProperty annotation can be used to specify which one should be used by default. However, this annotation has not yet been added to the FX controls classes. Hopefully this will happen before the final 2.0 release.
FXML looks promising but I wonder if it can be linked to an external style sheet as presented by http://download.oracle.com/javafx/2.0/css_tutorial/jfxpub-css_tutorial.htm ?
Regards
Yes, you can use stylesheets with FXML.
How exactly do we link to external CSS? Is it through the tag?
Is there any article that presentes the various way to integrate CSS in FXML?
You do it in code, as shown in the Java example. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s a good example of this anywhere online yet. 🙁
Cool!
The only thing I need to be a happy javafx coder is an editor that I can use to edit fxml files with autocomplete. I tried to code using a xml editor but it is not practical for real life screens to try to guess the tags I can use.
Anyway, it is fantastic that we can use fxml! (some day) 😀
I agree. I’m waiting fo it too.
It seems that FXML is going to be a start for correcting the JavaFX direction. I have summarized some ideas for it in following URL:
http://community.jboss.org/blogs/mousavi/2011/09/26/rich-internet-application-ria-by-java-is-javafx-on-right-path
Trying to use javafx2.0, Netbeans 7.1 & Junit with java 1.6 + sdk’s
Can launch the gui app in JUNIt, but can’t do anything after that.
Thread seems to be waiting for the GUi to close.
Want to press buttons on the gui thru code.
What am I missing ? Where is a good example ?
App written in FXML.
Thanks,
Jim
Some waaaaaa from the cheap seats…
Didn’t the FXML guy get the memo about how nice it is not to look at angle brackets all day?
I’m all for cowboys but this is getting ridiculous: Visage, GroovyFx, ScalaFx, FXML.
JavaFx 1.3.1 was great although it appeared to be built on a macro-ish pre-processor style compilation methodology. I wonder if that maintainability nightmare was a big reason it was dumped.
Pls,help me.project sets Exception((why?
Exception in Application start method
Exception in thread “main” java.lang.RuntimeException: Exception in Application start method
at com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl.launchApplication1(LauncherImpl.java:202)
at com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl.access$000(LauncherImpl.java:17)
at com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl$1.run(LauncherImpl.java:55)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:662)
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Illegal identifier character: ‘{‘.
at javafx.fxml.BeanAdapter.parsePath(BeanAdapter.java:1005)
at javafx.fxml.BeanAdapter.parsePath(BeanAdapter.java:927)
at javafx.fxml.BeanAdapter.get(BeanAdapter.java:736)
at javafx.fxml.expression.VariableExpression.evaluate(VariableExpression.java:45)
at javafx.fxml.FXMLLoader.resolveExpressions(FXMLLoader.java:1700)
at javafx.fxml.FXMLLoader.load(FXMLLoader.java:1337)
at javafx.fxml.FXMLLoader.load(FXMLLoader.java:1834)
at javafx.fxml.FXMLLoader.load(FXMLLoader.java:1819)
at javafx.fxml.FXMLLoader.load(FXMLLoader.java:1814)
at javafxapplication2.JavaFXApplication2.start(JavaFXApplication2.java:33)
at com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl$4.run(LauncherImpl.java:163)
at com.sun.javafx.application.PlatformImpl$4.run(PlatformImpl.java:124)
at com.sun.javafx.application.PlatformImpl$3.run(PlatformImpl.java:100)
at com.sun.glass.ui.win.WinApplication._runLoop(Native Method)
at com.sun.glass.ui.win.WinApplication.access$100(WinApplication.java:29)
at com.sun.glass.ui.win.WinApplication$1$1.run(WinApplication.java:49)