Before talking about the example itself, I want to show you how to create a JavaFX application in NetBeans. (If you haven´t installed JavaFX and NetBeans yet, please see my previous post Installing JavaFX 2.0 and NetBeans 7.7.1) Click on “New Project” in the “File” menu to open the project wizard. Then choose “JavaFX->JavaFX Application” and press “Next”.
In the next dialog you can specify the name of your application and a destination folder, where it should be stored. If you have installed JavaFX correctly the “JavaFX Platform” should be specified already. Otherwise you can add the platform yourself by clicking on “Manage Platforms->Add Platform” and specifying the paths to your JavaFX installation.
Note: By default the “Create Application Class” checkbox is checked. Please uncheck it because we´ll create our own application class.
Click on “finish” to create your first JavaFX application.
Hello World in JavaFX 2.0 – Example 1
Probably every single software developer knows the famous „HelloWorld“ example as it is often used to show the syntax of a (unknown) programming language and to give a first clue, of what the language looks like. I don´t want to break this tradition, so here are 2 different versions of a HelloWorld program in JavaFX 2.0. I´ll show the complete code first and then explain the individual parts.
import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.event.ActionEvent;
import javafx.event.EventHandler;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.scene.control.Button;
import javafx.scene.layout.StackPane;
import javafx.stage.Stage;
/**
*
* Created on: 17.03.2012
* @author Sebastian Damm
*/
public class HelloJavaFX extends Application
{
@Override
public void start(Stage stage) throws Exception
{
Button bt = new Button("Print HelloWorld");
bt.setOnAction(new EventHandler<ActionEvent>()
{
@Override
public void handle(ActionEvent arg0)
{
System.out.println("HelloWorld! :)");
}
});
StackPane root = new StackPane();
Scene scene = new Scene(root, 300, 150);
root.getChildren().add(bt);
stage.setTitle("HelloWorld in JavaFX 2.0");
stage.setScene(scene);
stage.show();
}
public static void main(String[] args)
{
Application.launch(args);
}
}
The first thing worth mentioning is that you have to extend from the
Application class in order to create a working JavaFX application. This class provides several live-cycle methods and is the starting point for your application. It is an abstract class (which means, that you cannot instantiate it) with a single abstract method start, that you have to override. You are provided a stage object by the JavaFX runtime, which you can use to display your UI.
