JavaFX, how to freeze the position of some columns in TableView

Question

The idea is: on a TableView of N columns to have the first M columns always visible even when you use the horizontal scroller.

The only thing near my requirement i

Answer 1

There is currently no such feature. In fact, even manipulating the scroll bar and responding to scrollbar events are problematic. Two options I can think of:

Option #1 - Multiple Table

Create a new layout which contains the two tables and two scroll bars like in the FXML snippet below:

Note the second tabe has HBox.hgrow="ALWAYS" set.

Write a function to locate the scroll bar in a TableView:

private static final ScrollBar getScrollBar(final TableView tableView) {
  for (final VirtualFlow virtualFlow: Nodes.filter(Nodes.descendents(tableView, 2), VirtualFlow.class)) {
     for (final Node subNode: virtualFlow.getChildrenUnmodifiable()) {
        if (subNode instanceof ScrollBar && ((ScrollBar)subNode).getOrientation() == Orientation.VERTICAL) {
           return (ScrollBar)subNode;
        }
     }
  }

  return null;

}

Use this to locate the two vertical scroll bars and bind their properties (like min, max, value etc.) to your own vertical scroll bar and then hide the original scroll bars. You will also need to set managed=false so that they do not take up space in the layout.

Locate and hide the horizontal scroll bars and bind the properties of the 'moving' table horizontal scroll bar to your own horizontal scroll bar.

We are succesfully using this technique to link two tables with a single scroll bar while waiting for this Jira to be fixed.

Option #2 - Write your own TableViewSkin Download the JavaFx source to see what they do with the skin and then you can either write a complete custom skin or write a skin that wraps two regular skins and implement in a similar way to Option #1 above