Why are there no ObservableQueues in JavaFX?

Question

Why are there no ObservableQueue in JavaFX? If we look at the Java 9 documentation (just to see if there are any changes from 8) for FXCollections, we see static helper meth

Answer 1

As @TomasMikula comments in @eckig's (now-deleted) answer, there probably just is not enough demand for an ObservableQueue. If you have a solid use-case, you should consider submitting a feature request.

In the meantime, it's not too hard to create a quick-and-dirty ObservableQueue implementing Queue and adding "observability" by subclassing ObservableListBase and wrapping a Queue implementation. Subclassing ObservableListBase is the "quick" part, but also the "dirty" part because you expose List methods as well as Queue methods; since an arbitrary Queue doesn't have a get(int index) the only way to implement that (that I can see) is to iterate through up to index. Anything that uses get to iterate through the ObservableQueue, regarding it as a List, will run in O(n^2) time. With that caveat, the following should work pretty well:

import java.util.LinkedList;
import java.util.Queue;

import javafx.collections.ObservableListBase;


public class ObservableQueue<E> extends ObservableListBase<E> implements Queue<E> {

    private final Queue<E> queue ;


    /**
     * Creates an ObservableQueue backed by the supplied Queue. 
     * Note that manipulations of the underlying queue will not result
     * in notification to listeners.
     * 
     * @param queue
     */
    public ObservableQueue(Queue<E> queue) {
        this.queue = queue ;
    }

    /**
     * Creates an ObservableQueue backed by a LinkedList.
     */
    public ObservableQueue() {
        this(new LinkedList<>());
    }

    @Override
    public boolean offer(E e) {
        beginChange();
        boolean result = queue.offer(e);
        if (result) {
            nextAdd(queue.size()-1, queue.size());
        }
        endChange();
        return result ;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean add(E e) {
        beginChange() ;
        try {
            queue.add(e);
            nextAdd(queue.size()-1, queue.size());
            return true ;
        } finally {
            endChange();
        }
    }


    @Override
    public E remove() {
        beginChange();
        try {
            E e = queue.remove();
            nextRemove(0, e);
            return e;
        } finally {
            endChange();
        }
    }

    @Override
    public E poll() {
        beginChange();
        E e = queue.poll();
        if (e != null) {
            nextRemove(0, e);
        }
        endChange();
        return e ;
    }

    @Override
    public E element() {
        return queue.element();
    }

    @Override
    public E peek() {
        return queue.peek();
    }

    @Override
    public E get(int index) {
        Iterator<E> iterator = queue.iterator();
        for (int i = 0; i < index; i++) iterator.next();
        return iterator.next();
    }

    @Override
    public int size() {
        return queue.size();
    }

}

You can register ListChangeListeners with this to be notified of modifications to the queue. (Note that if you want to support extractors and update notifications, you'd need to do quite a bit more work...).

import javafx.collections.ListChangeListener.Change;

public class ObservableQueueTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        ObservableQueue<String> oq = new ObservableQueue<>();
        oq.addListener((Change<? extends String> change) -> {
            while (change.next()) {
                if (change.wasAdded()) {
                    System.out.println("Added: "+change.getAddedSubList());
                }
                if (change.wasRemoved()) {
                    System.out.println("Removed: "+change.getRemoved());
                }
                if (change.wasUpdated()) {
                    System.out.println("Updated: "+oq.subList(change.getFrom(), change.getTo()));
                }
                if (change.wasReplaced()) {
                    System.out.println("Replaced");
                }
            }
        });

        oq.offer("One");
        oq.offer("Two");
        oq.offer("Three");

        System.out.println("Peek: "+oq.peek());
        System.out.println("Remove...");
        System.out.println(oq.remove());

        System.out.println("Element:");
        System.out.println(oq.element());

        System.out.println("get(1): "+oq.get(1));

        System.out.println("Poll: ");
        System.out.println(oq.poll());

        System.out.println("Poll again:");
        System.out.println(oq.poll());

        System.out.println("Poll should return null:");
        System.out.println(oq.poll());

        System.out.println("Element should throw exception:");
        System.out.println(oq.element());
    }

}