Properties

The FXML/2 property syntax is similar to classic FXML, and most of the time the notations look identical. However, FXML/2 relaxes the restriction that property names must be lower-cased, and allows a qualified notation to resolve ambiguities.

Instance property notation

Properties of scene graph elements can either be specified using attribute notation or element notation:

<!-- 1. Attribute notation -->
<Button text="My button 1"/>

<!-- 2. Qualified element notation -->
<Button>
    <Button.text>My button 2</Button.text>
</Button>

<!-- 3. Short element notation -->
<Button>
    <text>My button 3</text>
</Button>

Static property notation

Static properties can be specified using the following notation, where the static property name is prefixed with the declaring class:

<!-- 1. Attribute notation -->
<Button VBox.margin="10"/>

<!-- 2. Element notation -->
<Button>
    <VBox.margin>10</VBox.margin>
</Button>

Chained property notation

Properties can be chained using the dot operator. This is equivalent to following the chain of properties, and then assigning the attribute value to the last property.

<!-- equivalent to getSelectionModel().setSelectionMode(SelectionMode.MULTIPLE) -->
<ListView selectionModel.selectionMode="MULTIPLE"/>

Default property

The default property name can be omitted when the value is instead provided as the element’s content:

<!-- Omitted default property "text" -->
<Button>Hello</Button>

<!-- This corresponds to -->
<Button text="Hello"/>

Resolving ambiguities

In the short element notation example, the text element can be unambiguously resolved to the Button.text property. However, if a class named text was imported into the document, the meaning would change: a text element would then create a new instance of this class.

This can be resolved by qualifying the property name with the declaring class, as seen in the qualified element notation example:

<Button.text>My button 2</Button.text>

It is also possible to fully qualify the property name:

<javafx.scene.control.Button.text>My button 2</javafx.scene.control.Button.text>