The XAML4J Swing demo shows how you can use XAML4J to build the UI for a Swing Java program using XML.

Why would you want to do this? If you have ever written a large Swing application, you will probably agree that coding a GUI in Java can be a tedious task. XAML4J allows you to define the View (in an MVC approach) in XML and bind it to a Model and Controller written in Java. Or you can define actions (Controller) directly in XAML4J by using the <action> tag.

XAML4J is also a great way for a designer to prototype a UI and avoid the learning curve of Java. In fact, a designer could develop a full-featured application using a rich set of functions and beans exposed via XAML4J tags.

To run the swing demo, go to directory xaml4j/swing and type "maven demo:swing" (View the demo script ). You should see a window open with some swing components. You can test the actions by selecting a menu item or pressing the button. The actions in this demo simply output a message to the console. A more practical action could be to invoke a bean, call a script that opens another window, etc.

If you look at the XAML4J code for this demo , you will see that building a UI is pretty simple. For example, a menu bar is simply:

<menuBar>
  <menu text="File">
     <menuItem>
       <action name="New">
         ... some action ...
       </action>
     </menuItem>
  </menu>
  ... more menus/menu items
</menuBar>

As you can see, nested elements are automatically added to parent components (unlike Java, where you have to call parent.add(child) ).

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