I use Fragments instead of Views for sections of a page

Is that better practice to use fragments? I've been using views within borderpanes for my projects.

depends on the use-case, if you want multiple of them in the same Scope then you need Fragments

@Kimberly H The rule-of-thumb I follow is that Views are singleton while Fragments are prototype or per-instance. If you're working with a Main View and adding sections, say "Menu View" and "Status View", View is fine because there's only one instance or all these objects. If I need to add individual instances like in the cellFormat{} block, then I'll use Fragment.

Scopes can change this as custom control over the lifecycle (neither singleton nor prototype)

This is great! Thank you so much! I'm afraid I'm new to all this (a student, actually). What do singleton and prototype/perinstance mean?

Also, what does "Scopes can change this as custom control over the lifecycle" mean?

also, you'll need to put your label() in a borderpane block like center{}

...one sec. updating the SO article

@S Singleton is a widely-used term to refer to there being one and only one instance of a particular object in a program. For example, when the framework creates a View object based on your class definition, there is one and only one View object. When you call find() from anywhere in your program, TornadoFX will return that object. Prototype is a term I've pulled from the Spring framework (not related to TornadoFX) that describes there being more than one object in a program. Calling find() on a Fragment will return a fresh object every time. "Scopes" let's you refine the instance creation to be something in between. In that case, find() will return a specific instance and there may be more than one of these specific instances in the program. It's a more advanced use and IMHO one should stick to just Singletons and Prototypes.

All of this ^ relates to dependency inject or CDI (Context Dependency Injection). You'll use find() over plain Kotlin object creation to get dependencies. If you have a Fragment, it might need access to a globally-accessible service  That same service might be needed in a View. Rather than manually setting it for each object that needs this service, you'll use CDI to make it available wherever you need it.

If anyone is starting out with TornadoFX, they're welcome to check into the K4Stem project which I'm running with our intern so it's focused on the beginning level. We're building an electronics lab inventory management application (file-based data source) and adding math and science libraries that we find interesting. https://github.com/bekwam/k4stem

Beautiful! Much appreciated! I'll check that out.

@S don't forget to close out your SO question

Does anyone know where to have a complete documentation about properties for tornadoFX styling properties? I can access the list of properties from IDE but it doesn't explain the syntax

Or, the property that can be used in Stylesheet object would be helpful as well. Thanks in advance

Hello all. I have a button that wanted to have an outer circle like the grey border on the top but found no luck with documentation with the available properties. Does anyone knows what to add here?

Here is the stylesheet

Hi all! Question for you: How do you stretch/shrink a UIElement to make it fit in the space you want? I think I can make their roots change size, but that doesn't change the size of the things contained in the roots, so I just end up with a bunch of dead space. (Thanks. 🙂 )

@fucata A couple things come to mind 1. Make a composite object using a StackPane that contains the gray circle and the button. Everything is centered, so the smaller button appears surrounded by the gray circle. 2. Apply a DropShadow effect to the button

@S The different layouts -- VBox, HBox, AnchorPane, etc -- will define how the extra space is divided up. In some cases, you can specify a Priority with your component that will grow with the container. For example, a TextField put in an HBox or VBox can grow with the width of the screen.

@fucata you'll want to use CSS instead of my direct effect and fill settings

I'm a super nub to kotlin, JavaFx, and TornadoFX. So I've got some really dumb questions for ya'll. (not new to scala, or java, so it's just the syntax and feel I'm getting used to) How do I do an "onLoad" event. Like once the app starts up I'd like for it to be loading up some things for me, and be able to indicate that in the UI?

I don't have the repo out in the public land, because it's got some things that aren't public

oh, I'm also trying to do this with RxKotlinFX

or whatever order that's in, so I can use the reactive style of programming to keep my gui nice and responsive

but that part I can mostly figure out, it's the hooks into tornado FX that I'm not sure on

There is no

onLoad

event in JavaFX like there is in a browser.

so I'd just call it as part of the app's main method, and that'd probably be okay?