Usability of JavaFX Properties outside the scope of the GUI view

Question

After working some while with JavaFX (Java8) I had found the concept of Properties very useful, allowing to use bean compliant variables to be bound to update on changes usi

Answer 1

Use change listeners instead of bindings. Here is a nice utility method for that:

public  ChangeListener getFxListener(Consumer consumer) {
    return (observable, oldValue, newValue) -> {
        if (Platform.isFxApplicationThread()) {
            consumer.accept(newValue);
        }
        else {
            Platform.runLater(() -> consumer.accept(newValue));
        }
    };
}

Example usage in your controller:

// domain object with JavaFX property members
private User user;

@FXML
private TextField userName;

@FXML
protected void initialize() {
    user.nameProperty().addListener(getFxListener(this::setUserName));
}

public void setUserName(String value) {
    userName.setText(value);
}

I know that original poster mentioned that he cannot afford to use Platform.runLater but didn't specify why. If bindings were thread safe, they would be making this call under the hood anyways. There is no shortcut to thread safety, and these calls are served sequentially so they are safe to use.