FXML: An elegant way to bind a child width/height to the parent's width/height

Question

I'm using FXML with JavaFX to develop graphical interfaces. I discovered this method for binding the width/height of a child node to the width/height of it's parent node:

<Node fx:id="parent">
    <children>
        <Node prefWidth=${parent.width}></Node>
    <children>
</Node>

But that feels inelegant. I'd rather not have to give an id to a node just so it's child can reference it's dimensions. Is there perahps some method for referenceing the parent of a node? Maybe something like prefWidth=${parent.width}?

NOTE: I know this can be done programmatically from Java, but that's not what I want here. I'm looking for a way to do this in the FXML.

Answer 1

Expression bindings work by referencing elements of the FXMLLoader's namespace. There is no concept of "this" to refer to "the current node" (that I am aware of). So the only way to access the parent of a node is for the node itself to be part of the namespace: you can achieve this by setting an fx:id on the node itself:

<Pane>
    <children>
        <Node fx:id="node" prefWidth="${node.parent.width}"></Node>
    <children>
</Pane>