Good evening ladies and gentlemen,
I have a problem with Java Swing that I cannot solve, maybe you can help me. Here it is:
- I have one JFrame which uses BorderLayout, and many JPanels.
- Every time I need to put up a new screen (i.e. from the Main Menu, when Search button is clicked, go to the Search Menu), I simply remove the component (JPanel) which is located in the center, and put the new screen (new JPanel) in the center instead.
- This way, I don't call all my header and footer objects every time I want to put up a new screen.
Everything works fine with this system except this little problem: I want to trigger some methods everytime I put up a new JPanel or change back to an existing JPanel (generally speaking, everytime a JPanel appears).
In order to do that, I tried to implement ComponentListener's componentShown(ComponentEvent e) method, and added a ComponentListener to a JPanel which I put up in the center of my JFrame, and it did NOT work. After this, I did some research and found out that this componentShown (@ComponentListener) method only works when the visibilty of the JPanel is changed (from invisible to visible or the opposite). Unfortunately, I'm not changing the visibility of a JPanel, just replacing it with another one: removing the current one, and adding the new one. Below code illustrates how I replace the JPanels.
// Get the JPanel located in the center of our JFrame
JPanel currentView = (JPanel) myFrame.getContentPane().getComponent( 2 );
if ( currentView != null )
{
// Remove it from the JPanel
myFrame.getContentPane().remove( currentView );
}
// Add the new JPanel
myFrame.getContentPane().add( otherView, BorderLayout.CENTER );
// Pack the JFrame and show it
myFrame.pack();
So here is what I have. I would really appreciate it if you could help me out.
I think that this issue corresponding with HierarchyListener, for comparing
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import javax.swing.*;
public class ContainerListener extends JFrame {
private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
public ContainerListener() {
super("Test");
setContentPane(new TestPanel());
setDefaultCloseOperation(DISPOSE_ON_CLOSE);
pack();
setLocationRelativeTo(null);
setVisible(true);
}
public static void main(String[] parameters) {
EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
@Override
public void run() {
ContainerListener containerListener = new ContainerListener();
}
});
}
private class TestPanel extends JPanel {
private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
TestPanel() {
setLayout(new FlowLayout(FlowLayout.LEFT));
add(new JButton(new AbstractAction("Add label") {
private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
private int n = 0;
@Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event) {
TestPanel.this.add(new JLabel("Label " + ++n));
validate();
}
}));
addHierarchyListener(new HierarchyListener() {
@Override
public void hierarchyChanged(HierarchyEvent e) {
System.out.println("Components Change: " + e.getChanged());
if ((e.getChangeFlags() & HierarchyEvent.DISPLAYABILITY_CHANGED) != 0) {
if (e.getComponent().isDisplayable()) {
System.out.println("Components: " + e.getChanged());
} else {
System.out.println("Components: " + e.getChanged());
}
}
}
});
addContainerListener(new ContainerAdapter() {
@Override
public void componentAdded(ContainerEvent event) {
System.out.println("componentAdded : " + event.getChild() + "containerName" + " was added");
}
});
}
@Override
public Dimension getPreferredSize() {
return new Dimension(400, 400);
}
}
}
I highly recommend listening to the advice given by @Jeffrey, but if you do proceed with this design, then perhaps implementing the ContainerListener
interface may prove useful.
When in doubt, consult the API.