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Xtend, JavaFX-Properties and operator overloading
JavaFX has properties you can bind to each other to keep them insync. Watch this video for a very minimal example which scales a text by dragging a slider. Video Now let's look at the Xtend code used to write this small sample
The important lines are:
// Bidirectional binding between sliders
sl_1.valueProperty .. sl_2.valueProperty;
// Unidirectional binding from slider to scaleX/Y
l.scaleXProperty -> sl_2.valueProperty;
l.scaleYProperty -> sl_2.valueProperty;
The trick here to make this code not as verbose as it's java counterpart is that Xtend allows to overload operators (+, -, ->, .., ...).
What I don't fully understand is why I can't define my operator overloading like this:
def static <T> operator_mappedTo(Property<T> x, ObservableValue<? extends T> y) {
x.bind(y);
}
which should work when looking at the inheritance hierarchy of DoubleProperty, maybe some Xtend guru can explain it to me ;-)