PreferencesFX

Preference dialogs for business applications made easy. Creating preference dialogs in Java has never been this easy!

Table of Contents

• Maven
• Gradle
• What is PreferencesFX
• Advantages
• Main Features
• Documentation
• Structure
• Demos
• Defining a preferences dialog
  • Required arguments
  • Optional arguments
  • Setting types
• Localisation
• Validation
• Visibility
• Team

Maven

To use this framework as part of your Maven build simply add the following dependency to your pom.xml file:

Java 8

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.dlsc.preferencesfx</groupId>
  <artifactId>preferencesfx-core</artifactId>
  <version>8.6.0</version>
</dependency>

Java 11

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.dlsc.preferencesfx</groupId>
  <artifactId>preferencesfx-core</artifactId>
  <version>11.8.0</version>
</dependency>

Gradle

To use this framework as part of your gradle build simply add the following to your build.gradle file and use the following dependency definition:

Java 8

dependencies {
    compile group: 'com.dlsc.preferencesfx', name: 'preferencesfx-core', version: '8.6.0'
}

Java 11

dependencies {
    compile group: 'com.dlsc.preferencesfx', name: 'preferencesfx-core', version: '11.8.0'
}

What is PreferencesFX?

Creating preference dialogs in JavaFX is a tedious and very error-prone task. PreferencesFX is a framework which solves this problem. It enables the developer to create preference dialogs with ease and creates well-designed and user-friendly preference dialogs by default.

Advantages

• Less error-prone
• Less code needed
• Easy to learn
• Easy to understand
• Easy to use, for developers and users alike

Main Features

• Simple and understandable API
• The most important features are noted in the picture and the corresponding table below:

• | Instant persistance | Any changes to the application are saved instantly.

Documentation

This project uses the asciidoctor plugin to generate the necessary documentation. Run the following maven task:

process-resources

Afterwards, you will find the documentation in the target/generated-docs/ subdirectory.

Structure

A preferences dialog can contain multiple Categories.
Each Category contains one to multiple Groups
Each Group contains one to multiple Settings

For better illustration, the basic concept of writing a preferences dialog is shown below:

PreferencesFx preferencesFx = 
    PreferencesFx.of(SaveClass.class,
        Category.of("Category Title",
            Group.of("Group Title",
                Setting.of("Setting Title", new Property())
            )
        )
    );

Notes:

• It is also possible to omit the Group and declare all settings in a Category directly. However, in this case all settings will simply be displayed one after another without grouping. If you want more control, use Group.
• A Group can also be defined without a title. In this case, the individual groups are displayed with more space in between them, to ensure they can be differentiated.
• A Category can also take a graphic node to be used as an icon as the second argument, e.g. Category.of("Category Title", new ImageView(new Image("file:icon.png")),

Demos

We created several demos to visualize the capabilities of PreferencesFX.
Simply launch preferencesfx-demo/src/com/dlsc/preferencesfx/AppStarter.java and look into the different Tabs.

The following demos are available:

Defining a preferences dialog

Creating a preferences dialog is as simple as calling PreferencesFx.of().

StringProperty stringProperty = new SimpleStringProperty("String");
BooleanProperty booleanProperty = new SimpleBooleanProperty(true);
IntegerProperty integerProperty = new SimpleIntegerProperty(12);
DoubleProperty doubleProperty = new SimpleDoubleProperty(6.5);

PreferencesFx preferencesFx = 
    PreferencesFx.of(AppStarter.class, // Save class (will be used to reference saved values of Settings to)
        Category.of("Category title 1",
            Setting.of("Setting title 1", stringProperty), // creates a group automatically
            Setting.of("Setting title 2", booleanProperty) // which contains both settings
        ),
        Category.of("Category title 2")
            .expand()                                       // Expand the parent category in the tree-view
            .subCategories( // adds a subcategory to "Category title 2"
                Category.of("Category title 3",
                    Group.of("Group title 1",
                        Setting.of("Setting title 3", integerProperty)
                    ),
                    Group.of( // group without title
                        Setting.of("Setting title 3", doubleProperty)
                    )
                )
            )
    );

This code snippet results in the following preferences window, containing three categories:

To create a Setting, you only need to define a title and a Property. PreferencesFX does the rest.
You can then integrate this Property in your application. Changes of values in the preferences dialog will be persisted instantly, however it's up to you to decide whether you want to persist them instantly in your application as well.

Required arguments

You have a lot of options to influence the behavior and layout of the preferences dialog.
The following parameters are the absolute minimum, needed for the proper functioning of PreferencesFX:

Note: The value of the each Setting is stored using the Java Preferences API by default.
For testing purposes, to clear the saved preferences of the demo, run the method in the class:

preferencesfx-demo/src/test/java/PreferencesStorageReset.java

Optional arguments

The following parameters are optionally available to further configure the dialog created by PreferencesFX:

Setting types

The following table shows how to create Settings using the predefined controls and how they look like:

Syntax	Outcome
// Integer IntegerProperty brightness = new SimpleIntegerProperty(50); Setting.of("Brightness", brightness);
// Integer Range IntegerProperty fontSize = new SimpleIntegerProperty(12); Setting.of("Font Size", fontSize, 6, 36);
// Double DoubleProperty scaling = new SimpleDoubleProperty(1); Setting.of("Scaling", scaling);
// Double Range DoubleProperty lineSpacing = new SimpleDoubleProperty(1.5); Setting.of("Line Spacing", lineSpacing, 0, 3, 1);
// Boolean BooleanProperty nightMode = new SimpleBooleanProperty(true); Setting.of("Night Mode", nightMode);
// String StringProperty welcomeText = new SimpleStringProperty("Hello World"); Setting.of("Welcome Text", welcomeText);
// Combobox, Single Selection, with ObservableList ObservableList resolutionItems = FXCollections.observableArrayList(Arrays.asList( "1024x768", "1280x1024", "1440x900", "1920x1080") ); ObjectProperty resolutionSelection = new SimpleObjectProperty<>("1024x768"); Setting.of("Resolution", resolutionItems, resolutionSelection);
// Combobox, Single Selection, with ListProperty ListProperty orientationItems = new SimpleListProperty<>( FXCollections.observableArrayList(Arrays.asList("Vertical", "Horizontal")) ); ObjectProperty orientationSelection = new SimpleObjectProperty<>("Vertical"); Setting.of("Orientation", orientationItems, orientationSelection);
// Combobox, Multi Selection ListProperty favoritesItems = new SimpleListProperty<>( FXCollections.observableArrayList(Arrays.asList( "eMovie", "Eboda Phot-O-Shop", "Mikesoft Text", "Mikesoft Numbers", "Mikesoft Present", "IntelliG" ) ) ); ListProperty favoritesSelection = new SimpleListProperty<>( FXCollections.observableArrayList(Arrays.asList( "Eboda Phot-O-Shop", "Mikesoft Text")) ); Setting.of("Favorites", favoritesItems, favoritesSelection);
// Color ObjectProperty colorProperty = new SimpleObjectProperty<>(Color.PAPAYAWHIP); Setting.of("Font Color", colorProperty);
// FileChooser / DirectoryChooser ObjectProperty fileProperty = new SimpleObjectProperty<>(); Setting.of("File", fileProperty, false); // FileChooser Setting.of("Directory", fileProperty, true); // DirectoryChooser
// Custom Control IntegerProperty customControlProperty = new SimpleIntegerProperty(42); IntegerField customControl = Field.ofIntegerType(customControlProperty).render( new IntegerSliderControl(0, 42)); Setting.of("Favorite Number", customControl, customControlProperty);
// Static node Node staticNode = new Label("This can be your very own placeholder!"); Setting.of(staticNode);

Note: By default, PreferencesFX saves the settings under a key which consists of the breadcrumb to the setting, delimited by # signs. If you want to define your own key to be used for saving, use the method setting.customKey("key")

Localisation

All displayed strings can be internationalized. You can use resource bundles to define different locales and use the key instead of the descriptions. Adding i18n support is simply done by calling the method .i18n() at the end when creating the preferences:

private ResourceBundle rbDE = ResourceBundle.getBundle("demo.demo-locale", new Locale("de", "CH"));
private ResourceBundle rbEN = ResourceBundle.getBundle("demo.demo-locale", new Locale("en", "UK"));

private ResourceBundleService rbs = new ResourceBundleService(rbEN);

PreferencesFx.of(…)
             .i18n(rbs);

Validation

It is possible to optionally add a Validator to settings. PreferencesFX uses