Subcontroller not being injected into main controller

Question

I have a BorderPane (associated with a MainController), the FXML for the BorderPane uses <fx:include> to include a Label (with a controller StatusBarController) into the bottom region of the BorderPane. Unfortunately the the StatusBarController is not injected into the MainController class instance and I can't understand why.

main.fxml: BorderPane with the included statusbar

<fx:root type="javafx.scene.layout.BorderPane" fx:id="borderPane" xmlns:fx="http://javafx.com/fxml" fx:controller="com.example.controllers.MainController">
  <bottom>
    <fx:include source="statusbar.fxml" />
  </bottom>
</fx:root>

statusbar.fxml: The Label and it's associated controller

<Label fx:id="statusbar" text="A label simulating a status bar" xmlns:fx="http://javafx.com/fxml" fx:controller="com.example.controllers.StatusBarController" />

The MainController with a field for the StatusBarController:

public class MainController
{
    @FXML
    private StatusBarController statusbarController; // PROBLEM HERE: I would expect the StatusBarController to be injected but this does not happen!


    // Implementing Initializable Interface no longer required on JavaFX 2.2 according to
    // http://docs.oracle.com/javafx/2/fxml_get_started/whats_new2.htm
    // (I also tested this, the initialize() method is being called)
    @SuppressWarnings("unused") // only called by the FXMLLoader
    @FXML // This method is called by the FXMLLoader when initialization is complete
    private void initialize() {
        // initialize your logic here: all @FXML variables will have been injected
        assert borderPane != null : "fx:id=\"borderPane\" was not injected: check your FXML file 'main.fxml'.";
        System.out.println("MainController initialize()");

        //statusbarController.setStatusText("Hello from MainController"); // PROBLEM HERE: this fails because statusbarController is not injected as expected
    }
}

And the start of the application:

public void start(Stage primaryStage) 
    {       
        Parent root = null;

        try {
            root = FXMLLoader.load(getClass().getResource("/resources/main.fxml"));
        } catch (IOException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        primaryStage.setTitle("Demo");
        primaryStage.setScene(new Scene(root, 800, 600));
        primaryStage.show();
    }

The full source code of my sample is available at http://codestefan.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/SubcontrollerAccess/

So the question is: Why is the StatusBarController not injected into the statusbarController variable of the MainController?

Thanks for any hint!

Answer 1

To use @FXML tag you have to provide fx:id.

Update your main.fxml:

<bottom>
    <fx:include fx:id="statusbar" source="statusbar.fxml" />
</bottom>

After that you can use next constants in your MainController.java:

@FXML
Label statusbar; // node itself
@FXML
private StatusBarController statusbarController; // controller

Note, that statusbarControlleris not a partialy lowercased class name, but fx:id + Controller word.