Griffon 2.6.0 Release Notes

04 March 2016

Griffon 2.6.0 Release Notes

Dependencies

The following dependencies have been upgraded

  • org.codehaus.groovy:groovy-all:2.4.6

  • org.slf4j:slf4j-simple:1.7.18

  • org.slf4j:slf4j-log4j:1.7.18

  • org.testfx:testfx-core:4.0.2-alpha

Runtime

Lifecycle Updates

@PostConstruct and @PreDestroy are guaranteed to be invoked when an artifact is created/destroyed. Previously the runtime would invoke @PostConstruct on a service during shutdown if the service was never used at all. Destroying an MVC group guarantees that methods annotated with @PreDestroy are invoked.

EventRouter

It’s now possible to query an EventRouter for its set of listeners. EventRouter instances also use a well defined pattern to name the threads they may use internally.

@Contextual

Fields annotated with @Contextual now benefit from the following statregy to locate a matching key in the context:

  1. Use the field’s name.

  2. If not found then use the value of @Named if the file is annotated with it.

  3. If not found then use the fully qualified field type.

JavaFX UI Thread Ready ObservableList

JavaFXUtils can be used to create an ObservableList wrapper that guarantees all updates will be pushed inside the JavaFX UI thread. This allows models and controllers more freedom to change values without concerning themselves too much with the needs of the view. You will typically define an ObservableList property on the model, update its values inside a controller action (by default running outisde the UI thread). The view only needs to wrap the model property and pass it to the widget that will consume it, for example

ObservableList threadReadyList = JavaFXUtils.createJavaFXThreadProxyList(model.getItems());
listView.setItems(threadReadyList);

JavaFX Action Properties

All properties beloging to JavaFXAction will pushe their updates inside the UI thread. This makes it for an easier development experience when programmatically updating those properties inside a controller action, as there’s no longer a need to wrap update calls with Thread specific blocks (such as runInsideUIAsync for example).

Testing

TestModule Providers

Test cases may annotated any method with either @TestModules or @TestModuleOverrides to supply a list of Module instances used as the set of all available modules (the first annotation) or to override a subset of all modules (the latter). These annotations superceed the need to follow a naming convention, such as

public class SomeTest {
    @Rule
    public final GriffonUnitRule griffon = new GriffonUnitRule();

    @TestModuleOverrides
    public List<Module> modulesToOverride() {
        return asList(new TestModule() { ... });
    }
}

Functional JavaFX Tests

There are a handful of updates in this area. First, all methods may be executed in alphaetical order, carrying over their state from method to method. If one of them fails then all other methods will be marked as skipped. This is the same behavior found in Spock using the @Stepwise annotation. You must apply the FunctionalJavaFXRunner runner to the test case to enable this feature.

GriffonTestFXClassRule can inject members on the running testcase. You will typically invoke this feature in a method annotated with @Before (JUnit) or in the setup() method (Spock).

TestFX Updates

Both GriffonTestFXClassRule and GriffonTestFXRule now have the capability to locate a Window instance. There’s also a brand new WindowMatcher that can be used to assert the showing and focused state of a Window.

Buildtime

Additional Key/Values in application.properties

The griffon configuration block has a new property that can be used to define additional key/value pairs that may be replaced in application.properties; for example

griffon {
    disableDependencyResolution = false
    includeGroovyDependencies = false
    version = '2.6.0'
    toolkit = 'javafx'
    applicationProperties = [
        'build.date'     : buildDate,
        'build.time'     : buildTime,
        'build.revision' : versioning.info.commit,
        'my.property.key': 'my-value'
    ]
}

The application.properties must define matching replacement tokens, such as

application.name=@application.name@
application.version=@application.version@
build.date=@build.date@
build.time=@build.time@
build.revision=@build.revision@
my.property.key=@my.property.key@

Compatibility

Full binary compatibility report between Griffon 2.6.0 and 2.5.0 can be found here.

A list of fixed issues can be found at the 2.6.0 milestone page.