Ainoha Framework

Is a lightweight framework for developing JavaFX 11 (and later) applications in a fast way.

We strongly believe that use the FXML language for build the application user interface (UI) is the better development approach when we use JavaFX. Because of this, Ainoha Framework was designed around this feature, and our goal is to improve the way we are using it.

If you are not familiar with FXML you can take a look at the official documentation.

Usage

Next sections show how to start using this framework to develop a non-modular application (the full code can be found here: non-modular-hello-world).

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WARNING! Developing modular applications requires make some configurations in the module-info.java file. In the documentation we will address this issue (soon). An application example of this can be found here: modular-hello-world).

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Add Maven dependency

<dependency>
    <groupId>dev.ainoha.framework</groupId>
    <artifactId>ainoha-core</artifactId>
    <version>1.0</version>
</dependency>

Create a FXML file

We'll create this file in the package com.app.views with the name view-main.fxml (You can use JavaFX Scene Builder for do it).

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<?import javafx.scene.control.Label?>
<?import javafx.scene.layout.AnchorPane?>
<?import javafx.scene.text.Font?>

<AnchorPane prefHeight="332.0" prefWidth="466.0"
        xmlns="http://javafx.com/javafx/11.0.1"
        xmlns:fx="http://javafx.com/fxml/1">

   <children>
      <Label layoutX="67.0" layoutY="131.0" textAlignment="CENTER"
            text="Welcome to Ainoha Framework!">
         <font>
            <Font size="24.0" />
         </font>
      </Label>
   </children>
</AnchorPane>

Note that we don't bind this view to any controller class.

Create the view controller

package com.app.controllers;

import com.ainoha.core.annotation.FxmlController;

@FxmlController(fxmlPath = "/com/app/views/view-main.fxml")
public class MainViewController {

}

With the annotation @FxmlController we define a view controller for a specific FXML file.

Create an Application class

The Application class is the most important class in a JavaFX application, so we need to annotate this class with @FxApplication in order to be able to start the application using Ainoha Framework.

package com.app;

import com.ainoha.core.ApplicationContext;
import com.ainoha.core.ViewLoader;
import com.ainoha.core.annotation.FxApplication;
import com.app.controllers.MainViewController;
import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.stage.Stage;

@FxApplication
public class MyApplication extends Application implements ViewLoader {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        ApplicationContext.startApplication(MyApplication.class, args);
    }

    @Override
    public void start(Stage stage) {
        view(MainViewController.class)
                .stage(stage)
                .show();
    }
}

The traditional way to start a JavaFX application is by calling the method launch() from the main(). With Ainoha Framework the right way is to use ApplicationContext.startApplication(MyApplication.class, args).

ViewLoader interface give us the default method view() that allows to show a view through its controller, and tweak it to our needs.

Create the launcher (for non-modular applications ONLY)

package com.app;

public final class Launcher {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        MyApplication.main(args);
    }
}

Run the application

After compile the project with Maven (we assume you configured the POM to create an executable JAR and to copy the dependencies into the target/libs directory. How to do it here) we are able to run the following command at the project root directory.

$ java -jar target/my-fx-app-<version>.jar

and see a window like this...

License

Ainoha Framework is Open Source software released under the Apache-2.0 License