How to make an overlay on top of JavaFX 2 webview?

Question

Is it possible to to overlay any JavaFx2 widgets or canvas on top of a JavaFX 2 webview?

I want to generate a transparent heatmap by means of JavaFX 2 on top of a w

Answer 1

Adding overlay is very easy: just put webview and any pane to StackPane.

Another story is to synchronize overlay and webview data. To achieve that you need to ask webview for object coordinates through javascript. Here is an example which finds stackoverflow question area and marks it on overlay:

public class WebOverlay extends Application {

    @Override
    public void start(Stage stage) {
        StackPane root = new StackPane();
        WebView webView = new WebView();

        final WebEngine webEngine = webView.getEngine();
        Canvas overlay = new Canvas(600,600);
        overlay.setOpacity(0.5);
        final GraphicsContext gc = overlay.getGraphicsContext2D();
        gc.setFill(Color.RED);

        root.getChildren().addAll(webView, overlay);
        stage.setScene(new Scene(root, 600, 600));

        webEngine.getLoadWorker().workDoneProperty().addListener((observable, oldValue, newValue) -> {
            if (newValue.intValue() == 100) {
                // find coordinates by javascript call
                JSObject bounds = (JSObject)webEngine.executeScript("document.getElementsByClassName('question-hyperlink')[0].getBoundingClientRect()");

                Number right = (Number)bounds.getMember("right");
                Number top = (Number)bounds.getMember("top");
                Number bottom = (Number)bounds.getMember("bottom");
                Number left = (Number)bounds.getMember("left");

                // paint on overlaing canvas
                gc.rect(left.doubleValue(), top.doubleValue(), right.doubleValue(), bottom.doubleValue());
                gc.fill();
            }
        });
        webEngine.load("http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10894903/how-to-make-an-overlay-on-top-of-javafx-2-webview");

        stage.show();
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) { launch(); }
}