Update your Scene in JavaFX

Usually it is very simple to update your scene in JavaFX. For example if you want to update the X and Y position of your nodes, you can often simply do some stuff like:

node.setLayoutX(100d);
node.setLayoutY(150d);

But this isn’t a good way of doing it. In JavaFX you have to be sure you are in the JavaFX application thread. But how can you know this?

Platform.isApplicationFxThread();

But what if you’re not in that thread?

Platform.runLater(Runnable r);

So each time you would like to update your scene manually, you should check if you’re or not in the FX application thread. So let’s make a really simple helper class:

/**
 * @author Thierry Wasylczenko
 */
public class PlatformHelper {

    public static void run(Runnable treatment) {
        if(treatment == null) throw new IllegalArgumentException("The treatment to perform can not be null");

        if(Platform.isFxApplicationThread()) treatment.run();
        else Platform.runLater(treatment);
    }
}

The method run does the check for you. Finally you can use a lambda expression to execute that code:

final Node node = ... ;
PlatformHelper.run(() -> {
  node.setLayoutX(100d);
  node.setLayoutY(150d);
});

That’s it.