How to change CURSOR to busy and prevent user clicking - windows

Question

I have three COMBO BOXES in my window. It is a family tree application I am developing using JavaFX and SQLIte. Each person has Father, Mother and Spouse info which can be selected from ComboBoxes. ComboBoxes are loaded with data from database.
It takes a while to load these three combo boxes. Actually different delays for different combo boxes.
If I click on a combo box while it is not ready or another combo box is not ready, the screen turns white until the other combo box is ready.
I want to prevent user input on entire window from Mouse, Keyboard and Buttons until entire window is ready to accept user's input. Until then I want change the cursor to something like STOP.
How to do this? Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Hornigold

Answer 1

Run a Task<ObservableList<SomeType>> (or a Task returning some object containing more than a single list) on a seperate Thread. Before starting the thread you disable the root and set the cursor for the scene and when the task finishes you initialize the GUI with the results and reenable the scene again:
#Override
public void start(Stage primaryStage) {
Button loadButton = new Button("load");
ComboBox<String> combo = new ComboBox<>();
VBox root = new VBox(combo, loadButton);
Scene scene = new Scene(root);
loadButton.setOnAction(evt -> {
root.setDisable(true);
// save old cursor to restore after finishing the task
final Cursor oldCursor = root.getScene().getCursor();
scene.setCursor(Cursor.WAIT);
Task<ObservableList<String>> task = new Task<ObservableList<String>>() {
#Override
protected ObservableList<String> call() throws Exception {
ObservableList<String> result = FXCollections.observableArrayList();
for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
result.add(Integer.toString(i));
}
// simulate delay
Thread.sleep(5000);
return result;
}
};
task.setOnSucceeded(e -> {
// use results of task in the GUI
combo.setItems(task.getValue());
// restore cursor and reenable scene
root.setDisable(false);
scene.setCursor(oldCursor);
});
task.setOnFailed(e -> {
// todo: handle exception in Task.call
});
Thread thread = new Thread(task);
thread.start();
});
primaryStage.setScene(scene);
primaryStage.show();
}