assign data from dto to group of text fields in javafx

Question

I'm new to JavaFX and what I'm trying to do is I have a DTO object with 15 fields that I fetch from backend which I need to show all the fields in screen

for now what I did for each filed will create textfield in fxml file and inject it in the controller using textfield id then set the text for that from the dto for example

  @FXML
  TextField firstName;
  
   ........

  firstName.setText(dto.getFirstName)

so is there is any other way than going through each textfield and using setText to set their value

Answer 1

As you state that you are new to JavaFX, I do not recommend that you try to implement the potential approaches in this answer.

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Investigate the controlsfx BeanPropertyUtils, PropertySheet and PropertyEditor.

Different potential implementation strategies:

1. You could use a collection of TextFields, e.g. a list and assign values sequentially based on, for example, position in an sql row set.
2. Or perform a lookup on a map of strings to TextFields based on a column name key.
3. Or use reflection on Java Beans (this is how controlsfx works).

But none of them would be worth implementing unless you have a great many fields and need some generic system to handle values. Otherwise I wouldn’t recommend implementing such abstract functionality.

An example of a generic use case would be if you were introspecting on an unknown large database schema.

If you do need to do this, probably your best place to start would be the controlsfx library.

SceneBuilderKit, which was used to build SceneBuilder, has similar functionality but it is not as easily accesible as ControlsFX.

I advise you review the above comments then decide if you really want to do this.

If you do, then choose one potential strategy and implement it (this won’t be done in a StackOverflow answer).

If stuck, provide a complete minimal reproducible example for a concrete example and implementation attempt in code, only for the art of the problem you are stuck on. This allows you to create a more concrete question that is greatly reduced in scope.