Cannot listen to KeyEvent in JavaFX

Chechulin picture Chechulin · May 30, 2013 · Viewed 15k times · Source

I want my JavaFX program to respond to keyboard events.
I tried adding listeners to root Pane, to topmost Pane, but it doesn't respond to events!
Here is my code:

   AnchorPane root = new AnchorPane();
   root.setOnKeyPressed(new EventHandler<KeyEvent>() {

        @Override
        public void handle(KeyEvent t) {
            pressKey(t.getCharacter().charAt(0));
        }
    });
    root.setOnKeyReleased(new EventHandler<KeyEvent>() {

        @Override
        public void handle(KeyEvent t) {
            releaseKey(t.getCharacter().charAt(0));
        }
    });
    root.addEventHandler(EventType.ROOT, new EventHandler<Event>() {

        @Override
        public void handle(Event t) {
            if (t.getClass().equals(KeyEvent.class)) {
                System.out.println("AAARGH! " + ((KeyEvent)t).getCharacter());
            }
        }
    });

WHY U NO WORKING, key events? Am I doing something wrong here?
To be sure, mouse events works fine with the same code.

Answer

Alexander Kirov picture Alexander Kirov · May 30, 2013

One solution is to add an event listener to the scene. Because layouts don't have focus by default, so they don't respond on KeyEvents. KeyEvents are passed to the focused node first.

Another solution is to make your pane focusable:

root.setFocusTraversable(true)