Cannot re-use ActionEvent?

[AhFai Chan]

I have a search screen for e.g. company names.
When I input a company id (coyId) into the textfield and click on the search button, I expect a company name to be displayed in the center of the borderpane.
I want to search different company names multiple times by inputting different id's and clicking on search button.
The problem is, I can only do it once, if I click on it a second time, it crashes my IDE, the SDK, freezes the laptop with many hundreds of error messages in the console... I thought if of consume.event(), nope, that's not it.

	@FXML private BorderPane updCoyNode;
	@FXML private Button btnSearchCompany;
	@FXML private TextField txfCoyId;
	@FXML private Label lblCoyId;
	@FXML private Label lblCoyName;
	@FXML private Label lblDisplayName;

	@FXML private void SearchCompany (ActionEvent event) throws Exception {

		// mainCntrl.setSessionLog(RDateTime.getDateTime2400Formatted()+ " " + "ReportsPage.Coy Contact.Update\n");  // ERROR: NPE
		
		txfCoyId.textProperty().addListener( new ChangeListener<String>() {
			public void changed(ObservableValue<? extends String> changed, String oldId, String newId) {
				txfCoyId.appendText(newId);
			}
		});
		
		System.out.println("txfCoyId changed to " + txfCoyId.getText());
		
		if (!txfCoyId.getText().isEmpty()) {
			// pass txfCoyId to GetCoyNameController 
			FXMLLoader loader = new FXMLLoader(getClass().getResource("/application/views/tabs/adminpage/data/GetCoyName.fxml"));
			updCoyNode.setCenter(loader.load());
		} else {
			FXMLLoader loader = new FXMLLoader(getClass().getResource("/application/views/tabs/adminpage/data/NoCoyFound.fxml"));
			updCoyNode.setCenter(loader.load());
		}
		event.consume(); // 
	}
	

[Randy Tong]

Show the error here.

[Paul Clapham]

I would say that if you're going to call the event's consume() method then, yes, it would be a bad idea to use it again after doing that.

And I'm dubious about adding a listener to something every time you handle an action event. You're going to end up with a lot of duplicate listeners attached to that thing. Besides, your debugging code leads me to believe that you think adding the listener to the thing actually causes the listener's changed() method to be called.

[AhFai Chan]

Thanks. It works now, after removing Listener.
Yes, That's what I thought, that if I use a Listener, then the changed() method would be called.

[AhFai Chan]

Paul Clapham wrote: leads me to believe that you think adding the listener to the thing actually causes the listener's changed() method to be called.

Back in 3GL days, I would have instantiated another variable String oldVal = txfCoyId.gettext() and compare the new value with the old value to see if it has changed, but it is not comething I can do inside the body of a method.
Are you suggesting I should use changed() without Listener?

[Knute Snortum]

I'm confused.  Why couldn't you use the button's onAction event and build a list of company names each time the button is pressed?  You'd need a way to clear the names too.