codesimcoe/fxml-template-processor

String template processor for FXML

fxml-template-processor

String templates (preview in Java 21) allow you to inject expression values into strings, so you don't need to use explicit string concatenation, StringBuilder or formatting.

An important point of template strings is building other data types from the string and constrain and validate the input accordingly.

The fxml-template-processor project contains a String template processor for FXML, so you can use template strings for FXML code and convert to Node structures with FXMLLoader.

Current features

Three injection cases are supported:

attribute values

    var labelText = "Hi 1";
    var label1 = FXML()."""
    <Label fx:id="label1" text="\{labelText}"/>
    """;

Here the value of the labelText variable is provided as the text attribute of a Label.

The type of the value must match the type of the corresponding property.

attributes

    var labelAttribute = Map.of("text", "Hi 2");
    var label2 = FXML()."""
    <Label fx:id="label2" \{labelAttribute}/>
    """;

The key/value pairs of the labelAttribute Map are injected into a Label as attributes, in this case a text attribute.

The types of the values must match the types of the corresponding properties.

elements

    var label3 = new Label("Hi 3");
    var label3Pane = FXML()."""
    <Pane>
        \{label3}
    </Pane>
    """;

The value of label3 is injected as a child of a Pane.

The type of the value must match the type of the corresponding property. This is often the implicit children property of Pane, but can be any property depending on the surrounding markup.

Usage

Import with

import static no.hal.fxml.templateprocessor.FxmlTemplateProcessor.FXML;

Then use FXML(). in front of the template string to process the result with a fresh FXMLLoader. You can provide a pre-rigged FXMLLoader as argument, e.g. with the controller and/or location set, but note that it will the modified as a side-effect and hence, should not be reused.

As a convenience, there is an FXML() method overload taking an object, which is set as the controller of a fresh FXMLLoader instance.