Applying MVC With JavaFx

Question

I'm new to the GUI world/OO design pattern and I want to use MVC pattern for my GUI application, I have read a little tutorial about MVC pattern, the Model will contain the data, the View will contain the visual element and the Controller will tie between the View and the Model.

I have a View that contains a ListView node, and the ListView will be filled with names, from a Person Class (Model). But I'm a little confused about one thing.

What I want to know is if loading the data from a file is the responsibility of the Controller or the Model?? And the ObservableList of the names: should it be stored in the Controller or the Model?

Answer 1

There are many different variations of this pattern. In particular, "MVC" in the context of a web application is interpreted somewhat differently to "MVC" in the context of a thick client (e.g. desktop) application (because a web application has to sit atop the request-response cycle). This is just one approach to implementing MVC in the context of a thick client application, using JavaFX.

Your Person class is not really the model, unless you have a very simple application: this is typically what we call a domain object, and the model will contain references to it, along with other data. In a narrow context, such as when you are just thinking about the ListView, you can think of the Person as your data model (it models the data in each element of the ListView), but in the wider context of the application, there is more data and state to consider.

If you are displaying a ListView<Person> the data you need, as a minimum, is an ObservableList<Person>. You might also want a property such as currentPerson, that might represent the selected item in the list.

If the only view you have is the ListView, then creating a separate class to store this would be overkill, but any real application will usually end up with multiple views. At this point, having the data shared in a model becomes a very useful way for different controllers to communicate with each other.

So, for example, you might have something like this:

public class DataModel {      private final ObservableList<Person> personList = FXCollections.observableArrayList();          private final ObjectProperty<Person> currentPerson = new SimpleObjectPropery<>(null);      public ObjectProperty<Person> currentPersonProperty() {         return currentPerson ;     }      public final Person getCurrentPerson() {         return currentPerson().get();     }      public final void setCurrentPerson(Person person) {         currentPerson().set(person);     }      public ObservableList<Person> getPersonList() {         return personList ;     } } 

Now you might have a controller for the ListView display that looks like this:

public class ListController {      @FXML     private ListView<Person> listView ;      private DataModel model ;      public void initModel(DataModel model) {         // ensure model is only set once:         if (this.model != null) {             throw new IllegalStateException("Model can only be initialized once");         }          this.model = model ;         listView.setItems(model.getPersonList());          listView.getSelectionModel().selectedItemProperty().addListener((obs, oldSelection, newSelection) ->              model.setCurrentPerson(newSelection));          model.currentPersonProperty().addListener((obs, oldPerson, newPerson) -> {             if (newPerson == null) {                 listView.getSelectionModel().clearSelection();             } else {                 listView.getSelectionModel().select(newPerson);             }         });     } } 

This controller essentially just binds the data displayed in the list to the data in the model, and ensures the model's currentPerson is always the selected item in the list view.

Now you might have another view, say an editor, with three text fields for the firstName, lastName, and email properties of a person. It's controller might look like:

public class EditorController {      @FXML     private TextField firstNameField ;     @FXML     private TextField lastNameField ;     @FXML     private TextField emailField ;      private DataModel model ;      public void initModel(DataModel model) {         if (this.model != null) {             throw new IllegalStateException("Model can only be initialized once");         }         this.model = model ;         model.currentPersonProperty().addListener((obs, oldPerson, newPerson) -> {             if (oldPerson != null) {                 firstNameField.textProperty().unbindBidirectional(oldPerson.firstNameProperty());                 lastNameField.textProperty().unbindBidirectional(oldPerson.lastNameProperty());                 emailField.textProperty().unbindBidirectional(oldPerson.emailProperty());             }             if (newPerson == null) {                 firstNameField.setText("");                 lastNameField.setText("");                 emailField.setText("");             } else {                 firstNameField.textProperty().bindBidirectional(newPerson.firstNameProperty());                 lastNameField.textProperty().bindBidirectional(newPerson.lastNameProperty());                 emailField.textProperty().bindBidirectional(newPerson.emailProperty());             }         });     } } 

Now if you set things up so both these controllers are sharing the same model, the editor will edit the currently selected item in the list.

Loading and saving data should be done via the model. Sometimes you will even factor this out into a separate class to which the model has a reference (allowing you to easily switch between a file-based data loader and a database data loader, or an implementation that accesses a web service, for example). In the simple case you might do

public class DataModel {      // other code as before...      public void loadData(File file) throws IOException {          // load data from file and store in personList...      }      public void saveData(File file) throws IOException {           // save contents of personList to file ...     } } 

Then you might have a controller that provides access to this functionality:

public class MenuController {      private DataModel model ;      @FXML     private MenuBar menuBar ;      public void initModel(DataModel model) {         if (this.model != null) {             throw new IllegalStateException("Model can only be initialized once");         }         this.model = model ;     }      @FXML     public void load() {         FileChooser chooser = new FileChooser();         File file = chooser.showOpenDialog(menuBar.getScene().getWindow());         if (file != null) {             try {                 model.loadData(file);             } catch (IOException exc) {                 // handle exception...             }         }     }      @FXML     public void save() {          // similar to load...      } } 

Now you can easily assemble an application:

public class ContactApp extends Application {      @Override     public void start(Stage primaryStage) throws Exception {          BorderPane root = new BorderPane();         FXMLLoader listLoader = new FXMLLoader(getClass().getResource("list.fxml"));         root.setCenter(listLoader.load());         ListController listController = listLoader.getController();          FXMLLoader editorLoader = new FXMLLoader(getClass().getResource("editor.fxml"));         root.setRight(editorLoader.load());         EditorController editorController = editorLoader.getController();          FXMLLoader menuLoader = new FXMLLoader(getClass().getResource("menu.fxml"));         root.setTop(menuLoader.load());         MenuController menuController = menuLoader.getController();          DataModel model = new DataModel();         listController.initModel(model);         editorController.initModel(model);         menuController.initModel(model);          Scene scene = new Scene(root, 800, 600);         primaryStage.setScene(scene);         primaryStage.show();     } } 

As I said, there are many variations of this pattern (and this is probably more a model-view-presenter, or "passive view" variation), but that's one approach (one I basically favor). It's a bit more natural to provide the model to the controllers via their constructor, but then it's a lot harder to define the controller class with a fx:controller attribute. This pattern also lends itself strongly to dependency injection frameworks.

Update: full code for this example is here.

If you are interested in a tutorial on MVC in JavaFX, see:

• The Eden Coding tutorial: How to apply MVC in JavaFX

Answer 2

What i want to know is that if loading the data from a file is the responsibility of the Controller Or the model?

For me the model is only responsible of bringing the required data structures that represent the business logic of the application.

The action of loading that data from any source should be done by the Controller Layer. You could also use the repository pattern, which can help you in abstracting from the type of source when you are acessing the data from the view. With this implemented you should not care if the Repository implementation is loading the data from file, SQL, NoSQL, Web service ...

And the ObservableList of the names will be stored in the controller or the model?

For me the ObservableList is part of the View. It is the kind of data structure you can bind to JavaFX controls. So for example a ObservableList<String> could be populated with Strings from the model but the ObservableList reference should be an attribute of some View´s class. In JavaFX it's very pleasant to bind JavaFX controls with Observable Properties backed by domain objects from the model.

You could also have a look to viewmodel concept. For me a JavaFX bean backed by a POJO could be considered as a view-model, you could see it as a model object ready to be presented in the view. So for example if your view needs to show some total value calculated from 2 model attributes, this total value could be an attribute of the view-model. This attribute would not be persisted and it would be calculated any time you show the view.