How to bind a JavaFX Label to the selected item from a ListView

Question

I have a ListView full of POJOs and want a label in the GUI to display informations from the selected item.

My POJO looks something like that:

class Customer {
  private String name;
  ...
  public String getName() {
  return name; 
  }

Now when the user selects a customer from the list I want the name of the selected customer displayed in a label.

Obviously I can't bind to the name directly because it is not a Property. (And I don't want to replace my Customers Strings with StringProperty-objects because the SimpleStringProperty is not serializable and I need the Customer to be transfered via RMI.)

I've tried the BeanPathAdapter from JFXtras (which looks really nice by the way) like this:

    BeanPathAdapter<MultipleSelectionModel> customerBeanPathAdapter;
    customerBeanPathAdapter = new BeanPathAdapter<>(lstCustomers.getSelectionModel());
    customerBeanPathAdapter.bindBidirectional("selectedItem.name", lblCustomerName.textProperty());

But this solution only throws me an Exception:

...
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Unable to resolve accessor getSelectedItem
at jfxtras.labs.scene.control.BeanPathAdapter$FieldHandle.buildAccessor(BeanPathAdapter.java:3062)
at jfxtras.labs.scene.control.BeanPathAdapter$FieldHandle.buildAccessorWithLikelyPrefixes(BeanPathAdapter.java:3022)
at jfxtras.labs.scene.control.BeanPathAdapter$FieldHandle.updateMethodHandles(BeanPathAdapter.java:2986)
at jfxtras.labs.scene.control.BeanPathAdapter$FieldHandle.<init>(BeanPathAdapter.java:2977)
at jfxtras.labs.scene.control.BeanPathAdapter$FieldBean.performOperation(BeanPathAdapter.java:1348)
at jfxtras.labs.scene.control.BeanPathAdapter$FieldBean.performOperation(BeanPathAdapter.java:1186)
at jfxtras.labs.scene.control.BeanPathAdapter.bindBidirectional(BeanPathAdapter.java:567)
at jfxtras.labs.scene.control.BeanPathAdapter.bindBidirectional(BeanPathAdapter.java:369)
at at.gs1.sync.qm.client.gui.MainWindowController.initialize(MainWindowController.java:61)
... 22 more
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalAccessException: symbolic reference class is not public: class javafx.scene.control.ListView$ListViewBitSetSelectionModel, from jfxtras.labs.scene.control.BeanPathAdapter$FieldHandle
at java.lang.invoke.MemberName.makeAccessException(MemberName.java:512)
at java.lang.invoke.MethodHandles$Lookup.checkSymbolicClass(MethodHandles.java:1113)
at java.lang.invoke.MethodHandles$Lookup.resolveOrFail(MethodHandles.java:1094)
at java.lang.invoke.MethodHandles$Lookup.findVirtual(MethodHandles.java:626)
at jfxtras.labs.scene.control.BeanPathAdapter$FieldHandle.buildAccessor(BeanPathAdapter.java:3049)
... 30 more

So I hoped there would be a better solution than to use lstCustomers.getSelectionModel().selectedItemProperty().addListener(...) and handle the population of the labels there manually.

Answer 1

A better solution I think, to the one I gave before, is to use the BeanPathAdapter as you tried.
However the BeanPathAdapter needs to have the following property added to it:

private final ObjectProperty<B>  beanProp = new SimpleObjectProperty<>();
{
    beanProp.addListener( new ChangeListener<B>()
    {
        @Override
        public void changed( ObservableValue<? extends B> ob, B oldVal, B newVal )
        {
            setBean( newVal );
        }
    } );
}

public ObjectProperty<B> beanProperty()
{
    return beanProp; 
}

Then in your code you need the following:

BeanPathAdapter<Customer>  custBean;
custBean = new BeanPathAdapter<>( new Customer() );   // empty or any customer
custBean.bindBidirectional( "name", label.textProperty() );
custBean.beanProperty().bind( listview.getSelectionModel().selectedItemProperty() );