• There are 3 top-levels containers:
  • JFrame: main window
  • JDialog: secondary window
  • JApplet: applet
  Each top-level container contains an intermediate container (the content pane) which contains all the elements of the GUI except the menu bar.
• intermediate containers, e.g. JPanel, JTabbedPane, JScrollPane...
• atomic components: JComboBox, JTextField, JTable...
• typing Control+Shift+F1 on the border of any frame or dialog will dump the containment hierarchy to the standard output

Events

• ActionListener	User clicks a button, presses Return while typing in a text field, or chooses a menu item
  WindowListener	User closes a frame (main window)
  MouseListener	User presses a mouse button while the cursor is over a component
  MouseMotionListener	User moves the mouse over a component
  ComponentListener	Component becomes visible
  FocusListener	Component gets the keyboard focus
  ListSelectionListener	Table or list selection changes

  
  
• use EventListenerList to easily manager listener lists:
  

  public class ResultRecorder implements javax.swing.table.TableModel {     private javax.swing.event.EventListenerList a_listenerList;     ...     public ResultRecorder() {         a_data = new java.util.Vector();         a_listenerList = new javax.swing.event.EventListenerList();     }     void record(String testName,                 String testDescription,                 int    resultStatus,                 String resultDescription) {        a_data.add( new ResultRecord(testName, testDescription, resultStatus, resultDescription) );        javax.swing.event.TableModelEvent e;        int n = a_data.size();        e = new javax.swing.event.TableModelEvent(this,                                                  n, n,                                                  javax.swing.event.TableModelEvent.ALL_COLUMNS,                                                  javax.swing.event.TableModelEvent.INSERT);        java.util.EventListener[] list = a_listenerList.getListeners(javax.swing.event.TableModelListener.class);        for (int i = list.length-1; i>=0; i--) {              ((javax.swing.event.TableModelListener)list[i]).tableChanged(e);        }     }     ...     public void addTableModelListener(javax.swing.event.TableModelListener l) {         a_listenerList.add(javax.swing.event.TableModelListener.class, l);     }         public void removeTableModelListener(javax.swing.event.TableModelListener l) {         a_listenerList.remove(javax.swing.event.TableModelListener.class, l);     } }

  
  

• JTextComponent

• JTextField: text controls
  used to display and edit a line of text
  they are action based
  

• JPasswordField
  used to enter passwords
  

• FFormattedTextField
a_startPriority = new JFormattedTextField(new Integer(0));
...
int v = ((Number)a_startPriority.getValue()).intValue();

• JTextArea: plain text area
  used to display and edit unformatted text
  

• JEditorPane: styled text area
  used to display and edit text containing  more than one font
  some styled text areas allow some embedded components (images,...)
  a JEditorPane can also be used to simply display a plain text, HTML or RTF document defined by a URL
  

• JTextPane

• Document is the data model
• JtextComponent is the view
• EditorKit is the controller

• Document: the text is structured as a hierarchy of Elements
• StyledDocument: supports styled text

• AbstractDocument: implement the Document interface
• PlainDocument
• DefaultStyledDocument: implement the StyledDocument interface
• HTMLDocument

• insertUpdate: some text has been added
• removeUpdate: some text has been removed
• changeUpdate: the style of some text has been changed

• EditorKit
• DefaultEditorKit
• StyledEditorKit
• HTMLEditorKit
• RTFEditorKit

JList

JTree

JTable

layout managers

• BorderLayout: contained in five areas (north, east, south, west, center)
• BoxLayout: all components are in a single row or column
• SpringLayout: components are positioned by defining relationships between their edges
• CardLayout: components are positionned on different cards (this is also implementable with a JTabedPane)
  
• FlowLayout: components are layed out from left to right, on new rows when necessary
• GridLayout: components are layed out on a grid whose all cells have the same height and width
• GridBagLayout: components are layed out of a grid, a component can span several cells, the grid rows (resp. columns) can have different heights (resp. width)

• use the default platform look 'n fell

try {     UIManager.setLookAndFeel(UIManager.getCrossPlatformLookAndFeelClassName()); } catch (Exception e) { }

• Once a Swing component has been realized (setVisible(true), show or pack has been called), all the code that might affect it state or that might depend on its state must be executed in the event-dispatching thread.
• SwingWorker is a helper class to launch lengthly background computation from the event-dispatcher thread.
• SwingUtilities.invokeLater allows a thread to request the event-dispatching thread a given task.
  SwingUtilities.invokeAndWait does the same, but returns only when the task has been executed.