Programmatic (Java) access to style / layout ?

[Assaf Yavnai]

I agree that different people would like different things....
here is mine ;)
button.border().hover().setColor(red);

This styling is widely used in scripting languages, jQuery is a good 
example. Its done by always return an object from an operation, in this 
example setColor() will return the same object that was returned from 
hover(), allowing further manipulation in the same line of code. For 
example 
button.border().hover().setColor(red).setStrokeWidth(10).setBlink(false).setHandler(()->{}); 
If readability is an issue it can be formatted as:

button.border().hover()
     .setColor(red)
     .setStrokeWidth(10)
     .setBlink(false)
     .setHandler(()->{});

And this reminds me another issue, which may be a fork, but in my point 
of view its originated from the same approach, which is users manipulate 
internal data structures directly to do operations.
I didn't understand the design decision to expose internal structures in 
FX to do operations and manipulate them directly. In this case 
properties, another example is root.getChilderen().add(). This not only 
expose the internal data structure, but also requires more coding for 
simple trivial operation. users >90% don't need/care about the internal 
data structures, but 100% want to write less and simpler code. Usually 
user just want to do some trivial thing, add, remove, traverse..., for 
those common cases an alias can be used that encapsulate inside it the 
data structure used and the language quirks. In this example root.add() 
would do the trick. Other operations could look similar, like 
root.clear(), root, remove(...). root.traverse()(will return an 
iterator). For those edge cases which requires manipulating the data 
structure directly API can expose them, like root.getChildrensAsList(), 
or root.getChildren()


Combining the 2 approaches and the ability to retrieve the nodes related 
to the operations in 2 levels, say through .base() and .parent(), would 
yield the results that Oliver suggested (as I understood them)

(hope the layout wouldn't get scrambled upon send)

Group root = new Group()
                             .add( new Button()
                                                 .border()
                                                     .hover()
.setColor(red)
.setStrokeWidth(10)
.setBlink(false)
.setHandler(()->{})

                                                 .parent() //parent() 
return border
                                                     .setColor(blue)
                                                     .setBlink(true)

                                                 .base().caption() 
//base() return button
.setText("button1")
                                                     .setFontSize(30)
                                     .base(),

                                     new Button("button 2").caption()
                                       .setSize(25)
                                       .setHandler(()->{}))
                                     .base()
                         )//end of add()
                         .some().other().operation.onGroup()
                     );


my 0.002$

Assaf
On 12/17/2013 11:18 PM, David Grieve wrote:
> It is possible, but probably not in the way that https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-17293 would provide. By that I mean, it would be nice to be able to progammatically say "the border color for this button when hovered is red." This can be done now by adding an invalidation listener to the hoverProperty and setting the border on Region, but I don' t think this is what you are after.
>
> I think RT-17923 means different things to different people. I'd be interested to know what such and API would look like to you.
>
>
> On Dec 17, 2013, at 3:39 PM, Oliver Doepner <odoepner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> This might have been asked before but I haven't found it:
>> Is it possible to style JavaFX components using pure Java (i.e. without
>> CSS)?
>>
>> If this is being worked on, does anyone know what the status is?
>>
>> I think this is one of the areas where JavaFX can actually be better than
>> HTML5/CSS because a nicely typed Java representation of CSS could provide
>> great tooling and features that others had to invent LESS or SASS for.
>>
>> I have seen this (from Oct 2012):
>> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12943501/style-javafx-components-without-css
>>
>> I have also seen this: https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-17293
>> Last update: Brian
>> Beck<https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/secure/ViewProfile.jspa?name=bcbeck>added
>> a comment - Mar,
>> 12 2012 09:01 PM : "It is now past the point where this feature can be
>> added for 2.1. Will need to be considered for a future release"
>>
>> Thanks
>> Oliver
>>
>> -- 
>> Oliver Doepner
>> http://doepner.net/