CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaclass
AvivC
AvivC

Reputation: 133

How to manipulate variables in a class, from a different class?

Working on a simple tic-tac-toe game in Java.

I have a class named GameHelpers. This class should contain useful methods for the game. The game happenes in another class.

A method in GameHelpers is ResetGame(). This method is supposed to set the text on all the 9 buttons (the tic-tac-toe board) to blank, set them enabled again, and set a variable to 1.

This is it's code:

public class GameHelpers {

    public void resetGame(){
        for(int i=0;i<3;i++){
            for(int j=0;j<3;j++){
                buttons[i][j].setEnabled(true);
                buttons[i][j].setText("");
                count = 1;
            }
        }
    }

}

buttons[] is an array of JButtons inside the main class of the game, TicTacToe.

This method was previously inside the main class of the game, TicTacToe. But now that it's in a different class, it can't reach the buttons in the TicTacToe class and manipulate them.

I created get and set methods in TicTacToe, but how do I activate them from GameHelpers?

How can I make the method in GameHelpers work?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 197

Answers (1)

Hovercraft Full Of Eels
Hovercraft Full Of Eels

Reputation: 285405

You can get the source button that was pushed via the ActionEvent's getSource() method.

so for example:

public void actionPerformed(ActionEvenet e){
     JButton sourceBtn = (JButton) e.getSource();
     String text = sourceBtn.getText().trim(); 
     if (text.isEmpty()) {   // see if x/o assigned yet
       sourceBtn.setText(....);  / "X" or "O" depending on logic
     }
}

This way, all 9 buttons can share the exact same ActionListener, and the program will still work.

Edit
You state in comment:

Why the trim() thing?

I figure that you've got a tic-tac-toe game going on here, and if so, that you don't want to add an "X" to a JButton that already displays either X or O text. If perchance you've given the JButton a space " " for text, the trim() will get rid of any leading or trailing whitespace and will change the text to "", and you'll know that it can accept new text, either an "X" or an "O". If you don't need it, then don't use it.

Upvotes: 4

Related Questions