FXML: Custom components using BuilderFactory

If not, it’s a bit more complicated. You will need to provide a Builder and a BuilderFactory to the loader. As an example, in FXExperience Tools a nice ColorPicker control is used, that needs a Color passed to it’s constructor. So in FXML we want to write something like this:

<?import com.fxexperience.javafx.scene.control.colorpicker.ColorPicker?><!-- ... --><ColorPicker fx:id="colorPicker" id="colorPicker" color="GREEN" />

Now we need to create a BuilderFactory and a Builder:

import com.fxexperience.javafx.scene.control.colorpicker.ColorPicker;
import javafx.fxml.JavaFXBuilderFactory;
import javafx.scene.paint.Color;
import javafx.util.Builder;
import javafx.util.BuilderFactory;

/**
 *
 * @author eppleton
 */
public class ColorPickerBuilderFactory implements BuilderFactory {

public static class ColorPickerBuilder implements Builder<ColorPicker> {
 private Color color = Color.WHITE;
 private String id="colorPicker";

public String getId() {
 return id;
 }

public void setId(String id) {
 this.id = id;
 }

public Color getColor() {
 return color;
 }

public void setColor(Color color) {
 this.color = color;
 }

@Override
 public ColorPicker build() {
 ColorPicker picker = new ColorPicker(color);
 picker.setId(id);
 return picker;
 }
 }
 private JavaFXBuilderFactory defaultBuilderFactory = new JavaFXBuilderFactory();

@Override
 public Builder<?> getBuilder(Class<?> type) {
 return (type == ColorPicker.class) ? new ColorPickerBuilder() : defaultBuilderFactory.getBuilder(type);
 }
}

And finally when loading the FXML you need to pass the factory to your loader:

(Parent) FXMLLoader.load(
 TestTool.class.getResource("GradientEditorControl.fxml"), null,
 new ColorPickerBuilderFactory())

That’s it, would be cool if I could make SceneBuilder understand that as well.

Reference: Add custom components to FXML using BuilderFactoryfrom our JCG partner Toni Epple at the Eppleton blog.