How to align children in a HBox Left, Center and Right

Question

I have a HBox with children set up as follows:

HBox h = new HBox();
h.setMinWidth(555);

Label leftLabel = new Label("Left");
Label centerLabel = new Label("Center");

HBox rightContent = new HBox();
Label r1 = new Label("2");
Label r2 = new Label("3");

rightContent.getChildren().addAll(r1, r2);
h.getChildren().addAll(leftLabel, centerLabel, rightContent);

This will create a HBox with all the children floated on the left. I would like leftLabel to be on the left, centerLabel at the center, and rightContent to the extreme right.

How can I achieve this?

Thank you all in advance.

Answer 1

You can use the following trick:

import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.scene.control.Label;
import javafx.scene.layout.HBox;
import javafx.scene.layout.Priority;
import javafx.scene.layout.Region;
import javafx.stage.Stage;


public class Main23 extends Application {

    @Override
    public void start(Stage primaryStage) throws Exception {
        Label label1 = new Label("Left");
        label1.setStyle("-fx-background-color: red; -fx-text-fill: white;");

        Label label2 = new Label("Center");
        label2.setStyle("-fx-background-color: green; -fx-text-fill: white;");

        Label label3 = new Label("Right");
        label3.setStyle("-fx-background-color: blue; -fx-text-fill: white;");

        Region region1 = new Region();
        HBox.setHgrow(region1, Priority.ALWAYS);

        Region region2 = new Region();
        HBox.setHgrow(region2, Priority.ALWAYS);

        HBox hBox = new HBox(label1, region1, label2, region2, label3);

        primaryStage.setScene(new Scene(hBox, 640, 240));
        primaryStage.show();
    }
}

As you can see I just add several Region controls for fill space between labels and set Hgrow property to ALWAYS.

This trick is appropriate in some cases because sometimes you can't use other layouts i.e. if you want to align buttons inside of ToolBar.