It all started when my good friend Alex suggested that nodes built with GraphicsBuilder should have a name property as Swing components do (I wonder what he may have in mind ) and it turned out to be a good idea, complementing the recent updates on event and render handlers.

As shown in a previous example, you may navigate a node's children using a ops property, which is actually a List, using array subscript notation, but with names now in place it is also possible to use a map-like notation to get a hold of a nested node. This feature has been extended to transformations, filters, paints and paths as well, so now you are able to get a reference to those nodes using either an index or a name.

Here is a list of the properties you may use in this way

• ops - returns an OperationGroup representing the nested operations, available in all operations that support nesting.
• txs - returns a TransformationGroup representing any tranformations to be applied locally to the node, available in all operations that support transformations (clip, viewBox and gradientPaints too).
• filters - returns a FilterGroup representing any filters to be applied on the node, available in all operations that support filters
• paints - returns a List of PaintProviders, available in multiPaint only
• paint - returns a PaintProvider or a MultiPaintProvider if there is any paint defined for the current node, available in shape operations.
• borderPaint - returns a BorderPaintProvider if there is any defined for the current node, available in shape and outline operations.
• stroke- returns a StrokeProvider if there is any defined for the current node, available in shape and outline operations.
• paths - returns a List of PathOperations of a path node (or ExtPathOperations if it is a xpath node).

Assigning a name to a node doesn't create a variable reference, so it is not a replacement for the id attribute, it works in the same way as it does in SwingBuilder, where components may have a name (a regular property for JComponents) and a id property (a synthetic property used by the builder).

I expect to have the next release ready in the following days.

Keep on Groovying!