spinner component

[Tom Eugelink]

I would like to propose the addition of a spinner control to OpenJFX.

A spinner control for all means and purposes is a listview where only one cell is visible (rendered) at a time. Moving to the next and previous cell is done via clicking with the mouse on arrows or using keyboard presses. The control's API could look like:

Class: *Spinner<T> extends Control*
T denotes the type it is holding; String, Integer, any bean.

Properties:
*- ObjectProperty<T> valueProperty()
*  The value property holds the currently displayed (selected) value
*
- ObjectProperty<Boolean> cyclicProperty()
*  Cyclic means that the spinners cycles back to the beginning when the end of the list of values is reached, e.g. december -> next -> januari, or vice versa (januari -> previous -> december).

Methods:
*- public void decrease()
*  programatically select the previous value
*
- public void increase()
*  programatically select the next value

Events
*- ObjectProperty<EventHandler<CycleEvent>> onCycleProperty()
*  OnCycle method gets called when the spinners cycles (see cyclic property).

A value change event is not needed, since registering to the value property will take care of that.  Detecting a cycle based on value changes is cumbersome, so hence the OnCycle event.


Implementation considerations:

Since this actually is a list-with-just-one-cell, adopting a cell factory may be a good idea.

Even though a spinner is a list-with-just-one-cell, using a list as its data source is restrictive, because lists always have a lower and upper bound. For example, take a spinner that selects a year: the value "year" has no natural lower and upper bound. It could have in certain situations, but as a concept it has not. Therefor I would like to propose the usage of a data provider, in this case a single-value-linear-data-provider. Such a data provider uses a BigInteger to represent the current value and can increment or decrement.

Data provide API:
- *public BigInteger getPreviousIdx(BigInteger idx);*
   Calculate the previous index given the provided one, returning null if there is no previous. (Spinner may cycle.)

- *public BigInteger getNextIdx(BigInteger idx);*
   Calculate the next index given the provided one, returning null if there is no next. (Spinner may cycle.)

- *public T getValue(BigInteger idx);*
   Return the value for the specified index, could return null as a valid value

- *public BigInteger getIdx(T value);*
   Return the idx for the specified value, returning null means the value does not exist

The DataProvider can be based on an actual list, or on an implementation allowing the endless selection of a year.

A initial (but fully working) implementation can be found at http://code.google.com/p/jfxtras/source/browse/controls/src/main/java/jfxtras/scene/control/SpinnerX.java (screenshot attached to the email).

Tom