Tab key navigation in JavaFX TextArea

Question

How do I make hitting the Tab Key in TextArea navigates to the next control ?

I could add a listener to cath de key pressed event, but how do I make te TextArea control

Answer 1

As of Java 9 (2017), most answers in this page don't work, since you can't do skin.getBehavior() anymore.

This works:

@Override
public void handle(KeyEvent event) {
    KeyCode code = event.getCode();

    if (code == KeyCode.TAB && !event.isShiftDown() && !event.isControlDown()) {
        event.consume();
        Node node = (Node) event.getSource();
        try {
            Robot robot = new Robot();
            robot.keyPress(KeyCode.CONTROL.getCode());
            robot.keyPress(KeyCode.TAB.getCode());
            robot.delay(10);
            robot.keyRelease(KeyCode.TAB.getCode());
            robot.keyRelease(KeyCode.CONTROL.getCode());
            }
        catch (AWTException e) { }
        }
    }

This also works:

@Override
public void handle(KeyEvent event) {
    KeyCode code = event.getCode();

    if (code == KeyCode.TAB && !event.isShiftDown() && !event.isControlDown()) {
        event.consume();
        Node node = (Node) event.getSource();            
        KeyEvent newEvent 
          = new KeyEvent(event.getSource(),
                     event.getTarget(), event.getEventType(),
                     event.getCharacter(), event.getText(),
                     event.getCode(), event.isShiftDown(),
                     true, event.isAltDown(),
                     event.isMetaDown());

        node.fireEvent(newEvent);            
        }
    }

Both simulate pressing CTRL+TAB when the user presses TAB. The default behaviour of the TextArea for CTRL+TAB is moving the focus to the next control. Please note the second code is based on Johan De Schutter's answer.