RequestFocus in TextField doesn't work

Question

I use JavaFX 2.1 and I created GUI using FXML, in the controller of this GUI I added myTextField.requestFocus();.

But I always get the focus in the other co

Answer 1

This can occur when the Scene property for the Node is not yet set. Alas, the scene property can take a "long" time to be set.

The child node's scene property lags when a scene is first created, and also, when items are added to some parents, such as a TabPane (oddly some parents seem immune, I'm not sure why).

The correct strategy, which has always worked for me :

if (myNode.scene) == null {
    // listen for the changes to the node's scene property,
    // and request focus when it is set
} else {
    myNode.requestFocus()
}

I have a handy Kotlin extension function which does this.

fun Node.requestFocusOnSceneAvailable() {
    if (scene == null) {
        val listener = object : ChangeListener {
            override fun changed(observable: ObservableValue?, oldValue: Scene?, newValue: Scene?) {
                if (newValue != null) {
                    sceneProperty().removeListener(this)
                    requestFocus()
                }
            }
        }
        sceneProperty().addListener(listener)
    } else {
        requestFocus()
    }
}

You can then call it from within you code like so :

myNode.requestFocusOnSceneAvailable()

Perhaps somebody would like to translate it to Java.