ControlP5 is a library written by Andreas Schlegel for the programming environment [Processing](http://www.processing.org). ControlP5 is a GUI and controller library for processing that can be used in authoring, application mode.
The range of available controllers includes Slider, Button, Toggle, Knob, Textfield, RadioButton, Checkbox, Lists amongst others. These controllers can be easily added to a processing sketch, or displayed inside a separate control window. They can be organized in tabs or groups as well as rendered into PGraphics buffers. The state of a controller can be saved to file in JSON format.
ControlP5 provides a range of controllers, each controller comes with an example which is located inside the examples/controllers folder. This is a good place to get started with ControlP5.
### Instantiate ControlP5
To create an instance of ControlP5, you need to call ControlP5's constructor and pass a reference of your sketch as argument, in most cases this will happen inside setup() and the argument and the argument for the constructor call is _this_, the reference to the current sketch object.
```java
import controlP5.*;
ControlP5 cp5;
void setup() {
cp5 = new ControlP5(this);
}
```
Alternatively, ControlP5 can be instantiated from other places as well for example from another object. Here, just as before, you need to pass a sketch reference as argument when instantiating the ControlP5 object.
```java
import controlP5.*;
GUI gui;
void setup() {
gui = new GUI(this);
}
class GUI {
ControlP5 cp5;
GUI(ControlP5 theControlP5) {
cp5 = new ControlP5(theControlP5);
}
}
```
### Adding Controllers
To add controllers to a ControlP5 object, use the add function followed by the name of the Controller, for example to add a Slider use cp5.addSlider("mySlider"). Here function addSlider takes one argument which is the unique name of the controller to be added. In case a controller with the same name is already registered with ControlP5, the old controller will be overriden - this is then indicated and printed as a warning message in the console. All default add functions are implemented with class ControlP5Base; have a look at its source code for further reference.
```java
import controlP5.*;
ControlP5 cp5;
void setup() {
size(400,400);
cp5 = new ControlP5(this);
cp5.addSlider("mySlider");
cp5.addButton("myButton");
}
void draw() {}
```
The example above adds 2 controllers to your sketch and renders them on top of your sketch. To adjust the size, position, color, etc. ControlP5 uses [method chaining](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_chaining) and [setter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutator_method) functions. For example setPosition(x,y) will change the position of a controller, setSize(width,height) will change the size of a controller; the naming convention is straight forward, a function does what it says, and the same goes for the other setters and getters as well. For further reference and overview, start with browsing the source code of class Controller and its implementations, furthermore have a look at the documentation.
To change the order of controllers, use Controller.bringToFront() which will position the controller on top of all others. See example [ControlP5bringToFront](examples/use/ControlP5bringToFront/ControlP5bringToFront)
Methods such as value(), name(), controller() and all other methods that are used to get or set object variables have been prefixed with get and set - value() became getValue() and setValue(). In previous (before 2.2.1) version these deprecated methods were still available but have been removed with >= version 2.2.1
Due to various changes and modifications the tooltip has been removed for now since it became incompatible, the same goes for MultiList - will they come back? I doubt it. ListBox and DropdownList are still available but have been replace with the ScrollableList, please have a look at the ScrollableList source and example
ControlP5 is a project that started in 2006 as a very simple UI for controlling Processing parameters for better debugging, testing and interaction purposes. Starting from only 3 controllers its controller base has grown up to around 30 controllers and over 70 examples. A history of controlP5 versions is available on [google code downloads](https://code.google.com/p/controlp5/downloads/list?can=1&q=&colspec=Filename+Summary+Uploaded+ReleaseDate+Size+DownloadCount). This library has been widely used by processing user in academic, research and professional environments for prototyping and tool development.
ControlP5 has been in development for over 9 years and started as a small GUI library for Processing. Over the years both Processing and ControlP5 have grown substantially and as part of that journey many changes have been applied to both. From a ControlP5 perspective some changes were due to changes made to Processing's API and source code, other changes were due to additional controller implementations, extended functionality, user feedback and reuqests. Since writing controlP5 from scratch was a learning process for myself in itself, a proper initial strategy for the software architecture of the library was missing. When it became apparent that a proper architecture would have made the development much easier and comfortable it was already too late, I had to comply to the piles of code I had created. Would I do things differently now? yes I would.
Why is the bit-font so blurry? it used to be crisp. Let me blame this on the OpenGL texture rendering. If you have a suggestion or a simple and easy to implement solution, please let me know inside the issues section.
Currently there is no javascript version of ControlP5, though I had started implementing a slimmed down version for processing.js but since it is currently unclear which javascript version - processing.js or p5.js - will become the default js version of processing, controlP5.js is on hold. There is a tendency that p5.js will become the primary javascript environment
