Image Icon not displaying in JPanel

Question

Code is pretty simple. I get a URL string from an arraylist. I am then trying to draw an image in my JPanel. If I don't initialize a layout in the code, it returns an error. If I do initialize a layout, there's no error, but the icon doesn't display either. Am I missing something? Thank you!

public class CharacterPage extends JFrame {
   private JPanel imagesPanel;
   private WikiDB wikiDB;

     public CharacterPage(WikiDB db) throws IOException {
          super("Character Page");
          setContentPane(rootPanel);
          pack();
          setDefaultCloseOperation(WindowConstants.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
          setVisible(true);
          setSize(new Dimension(500,500));
          imagesPanel.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
          this.wikiDB = db;

               searchButton.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
               @Override
               public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
               ArrayList<String> characterImages =    
                wikiDB.searchImages(characterID);
              //array contains this string: http://cosplayidol.otakuhouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/s-1-1.jpg

                for (int x = 0; x < characterImages.size(); x++){
                    String imageURL = characterImages.get(x);
                    Graphics g = getGraphics();


                   try {
                       URL url = new URL(imageURL);

                       //icon.paintIcon(imagesPanel,g,300,100);

                       JLabel wIcon = new JLabel(new ImageIcon(url));

                       imagesPanel.setVisible(true);
                       imagesPanel.add(wIcon);


                   } catch (MalformedURLException mue){
                       mue.printStackTrace();
                   }
            }
      });
}

Below is a separate program I used to read my URL. Using the code below, I can read my URL without returning any errors, but it still doesn't display in the GUI.

public class SimpleGUI extends JFrame {
private JPanel imagesPanel;

public SimpleGUI() throws IOException {
    super("GUI Page");
    setContentPane(imagesPanel);
    pack();
    setDefaultCloseOperation(WindowConstants.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
    setVisible(true);
    setSize(new Dimension(500, 500));
    imagesPanel.setLayout(new GridLayout());


    BufferedImage img1 = null;

    try
    {
        URL url1 = new URL("http://cosplayidol.otakuhouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/s-1-1.jpg");

        URLConnection conn1 = url1.openConnection();
        conn1.setRequestProperty("User-Agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.11 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/23.0.1271.95 Safari/537.11");
        InputStream in1 = conn1.getInputStream();

        img1 = ImageIO.read(in1);
    } catch (IOException e)
    {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }


    JLabel wIcon = new JLabel(new ImageIcon(img1));
    imagesPanel.add(wIcon);

   }
}

EDIT: I am getting closer in that I can now pop up a separate frame containing the picture using this code:

public class SimpleGUI extends JFrame {
private JPanel imagesPanel;
private JFrame mainFrame;

public SimpleGUI() throws IOException {
    super("GUI Page");
    setContentPane(imagesPanel);
    pack();
    setVisible(true);
    setDefaultCloseOperation(WindowConstants.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
    setSize(new Dimension(500, 500));

    mainFrame = new JFrame();

    imagesPanel.setLayout(new GridLayout());
    imagesPanel.setBounds(0,0,200,200);
    mainFrame.add(imagesPanel);
    mainFrame.setVisible(true);

I can't seem to find the original frame in my GUI form, so I can add the imagesPanel to that instead. I am using IntelliJ's GUI form builder.

Answer 1

One problem, you're trying to add multiple components to a BorderLayout using JPanel from within a for loop and by doing this, you'll over-write all that was added before with anything added new. Use a much more appropriate layout such as a GridLayout instead.

Another problem, where do you add the imagesPanel to anything? Calling setVisible(true) on it will do nothing of use, but adding it to the JFrame or to a JPanel that is ultimately held by the JFrame will do a lot.

Also, you need to do some serious debugging usually before coming here -- does your reading in of the image work at all? Create a simple GUI, one that reads in the Image (use ImageIO.read(URL url) for this), creates an ImageIcon and displays the Icon in a JOptionPane. If this works, then the problem is elsewhere. If it doesn't then work on correcting the URL address.