• Creating a ToggleButton
• Adding a ToggleButton to the Scene Graph
• ToggleButton Text
• ToggleButton Font
• Reading Selected State
• ToggleGroup
• Reading Selected State of a ToggleGroup

A JavaFX ToggleButton is a button that can be selected or not selected. Like a button that stays in when you press it, and when you press it the next time it comes out again. Toggled - not toggled. The JavaFX ToggleButton is represented by the class javafx.scene.control.ToggleButton .

Creating a ToggleButton

You create a JavaFX ToggleButton by creating an instance of the ToggleButton class. Here is an example of creating a JavaFX ToggleButton instance:

ToggleButton toggleButton1 = new ToggleButton("Left");

This example creates a ToggleButton with the text Left on.

Adding a ToggleButton to the Scene Graph

To make a ToggleButton visible you must add it to the JavaFX scene graph. This means adding it to a Scene, or as child of a layout which is attached to a Scene object.

Here is an example that attaches a JavaFX ToggleButton to the scene graph:

package com.jenkov.javafx.controls;

import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.scene.control.ToggleButton;
import javafx.scene.layout.HBox;
import javafx.stage.Stage;


public class ToggleButtonExperiments extends Application  {


    @Override
    public void start(Stage primaryStage) throws Exception {
        primaryStage.setTitle("HBox Experiment 1");


        ToggleButton toggleButton1 = new ToggleButton("Left");

        HBox hbox = new HBox(toggleButton1);


        Scene scene = new Scene(hbox, 200, 100);
        primaryStage.setScene(scene);
        primaryStage.show();

    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Application.launch(args);
    }
}

The application resulting from running the above example code is illustrated in the following two screenshots. The first screenshot shows a ToggleButton which is not pressed, and the second screenshot shows the same ToggleButton pressed (selected, activated etc.):

ToggleButton Text

You can set or change the text of a JavaFX ToggleButton via its setText() method. Here is an example of changing the text of a JavaFX ToggleButton via setText():

ToggleButton toggleButton = new ToggleButton("Toggle This!");

toggleButton.setText("New Text");

ToggleButton Font

You can set the font to use to render the button text of a JavaFX ToggleButton via its setFont() method. You can read more about creating fonts in my JavaFX Fonts tutorial. Here is an example of setting the font of a JavaFX ToggleButton:

ToggleButton toggleButton = new ToggleButton("Toggle This!");

Font arialFontBold36  = Font.font("Arial", FontWeight.BOLD, 36);

toggleButton.setFont(arialFontBold36);

Reading Selected State

The ToggleButton class has a method named isSelected which lets you determine if the ToggleButton is selected (pressed) or not. The isSelected() method returns a boolean with the value true if the ToggleButton is selected, and false if not. Here is an example:

boolean isSelected = toggleButton1.isSelected();

ToggleGroup

You can group JavaFX ToggleButton instances into a ToggleGroup. A ToggleGroup allows at most one ToggleButton to be toggled (pressed) at any time. The ToggleButton instances in a ToggleGroup thus functions similarly to radio buttons.

Here is a JavaFX ToggleGroup example:

ToggleButton toggleButton1 = new ToggleButton("Left");
ToggleButton toggleButton2 = new ToggleButton("Right");
ToggleButton toggleButton3 = new ToggleButton("Up");
ToggleButton toggleButton4 = new ToggleButton("Down");

ToggleGroup toggleGroup = new ToggleGroup();

toggleButton1.setToggleGroup(toggleGroup);
toggleButton2.setToggleGroup(toggleGroup);
toggleButton3.setToggleGroup(toggleGroup);
toggleButton4.setToggleGroup(toggleGroup);

Here is a full example that adds the 4 ToggleButton instances to a ToggleGroup, and adds them to the scene graph too:

package com.jenkov.javafx.controls;

import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.scene.control.ToggleButton;
import javafx.scene.control.ToggleGroup;
import javafx.scene.layout.HBox;
import javafx.stage.Stage;


public class ToggleButtonExperiments extends Application  {


    @Override
    public void start(Stage primaryStage) throws Exception {
        primaryStage.setTitle("HBox Experiment 1");


        ToggleButton toggleButton1 = new ToggleButton("Left");
        ToggleButton toggleButton2 = new ToggleButton("Right");
        ToggleButton toggleButton3 = new ToggleButton("Up");
        ToggleButton toggleButton4 = new ToggleButton("Down");

        ToggleGroup toggleGroup = new ToggleGroup();

        toggleButton1.setToggleGroup(toggleGroup);
        toggleButton2.setToggleGroup(toggleGroup);
        toggleButton3.setToggleGroup(toggleGroup);
        toggleButton4.setToggleGroup(toggleGroup);

        HBox hbox = new HBox(toggleButton1, toggleButton2, toggleButton3, toggleButton4);


        Scene scene = new Scene(hbox, 200, 100);
        primaryStage.setScene(scene);
        primaryStage.show();

    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Application.launch(args);
    }
}

The resulting applications looks like this:

Reading Selected State of a ToggleGroup

You can read which ToggleButton of a ToggleGroup is selected (pressed) using the getSelectedToggle() method, like this:

ToggleButton selectedToggleButton =
        (ToggleButton) toggleGroup.getSelectedToggle();

If no ToggleButton is selected the getSelectedToggle() method returns null .