Changing the color of a jButton every couple of seconds

Question

I'm trying to create a little button game for a school project. What the game is, is there are a couple buttons that every like 3 seconds will flash a color then if you press it when the color is up, it stays that color.

I have all the buttons created and they display just fine. I just need help with the actual handling code.

• What I'm getting stuck on

  timer = new Timer(length, jButton1ActionPerformed);
  timer.setInitialDelay(pause);
  
  
  
  private void jButton1ActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) {  
  
      jButton1.setBackground(Color.blue);
  
  } 
  

Now this isn't my actual game, I'm just trying to get the hang of the Swing Timers

Now that I have the button changing colors this is the code that I tried to get it to stay that color when clicked.

    private void jButton1ActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) { 

       if(jButton1.getBackground().equals(Color.blue){
          jButton1.setBackground(Color.blue);
          timer.stop();  
       }

    }  

Answer 1

You will want to use a Swing Timer to handle your animation. In the Timer's ActionListener, you would have code that randomly selects a button (the Random class can help here) and changes its color, possibly via setForground(...), or even by using ImageIcons and swapping icons via setIcon(...). The JButton's ActionListener can then check the button's icon or foreground color and act accordingly.

Since this is a school project, I'm not posting a code solution but will add some links that should help:

• Overall Swing Tutorial
• Swing Timer Tutorial
• JButton Tutorial
• java.util.Random API

---

To create an ActionListener for your Timer, do just that -- create one inline:

ActionListener timerListener = new ActionListener() {
  public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
     // code to be performed every xxx mSec goes here
  }
}
int timerDelay = 3 * 1000; // or whatever length of time needed
Timer timer = new Timer(timerDelay, timerListener);

// later on in the block where you want to start your Timer
timer.start();