Correct MVC approach for communication between classes of a custom component in JavaFX 2

Question

I have a custom JavaFX-2 component written in the fxml language (Which I'll referrer as child or children), which I used the JavaFX Scene Builder to create it. One of my view classes need to display several (~100) of those components and communicate with them. With the MVC architecture in mind, what's the best approach for communication?

1. (Container) Model -> (Children) Model
2. (Container) Controller -> (Children) Controller
3. (Container) Controller -> (Children) Model

Basically I need at least to be able to monitor 2 case of events happening in the children UI and or in the container object.

Case 1: The user clicked a button (or interacted with another object) which exists inside my custom component (child), the container must be communicate about the change.

Case 2: The user triggered an event on the container, filtering the components based on a specific query for example, I need to communicate the children about this change.

Thanks in advance for all the help. Cheers

Answer 1

I always tend to keep communication between the controllers, while my models are POJOs although they use javafx properties to store data. This seems to map to option #2.

It is fairly easy for the parent controller to call the child controller, all it has to do is load them and keep them in a list. The child calling the parent is a little more ugly since it might require a reference to the parent. I try and avoid this by having an event handler property on the child controller which the parent adds a listener to. This has made my child controls quite reusable.