CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaswinglayout-manager
Shannon Rothe
Shannon Rothe

Reputation: 1122

Fill JPanel only to the height of inner elements

I'm trying to achieve a design whereby one of my JPanel's heights is only set to the height of it's inner components. Currently it's laid out like so:

JPanel (BoxLayout)
    JPanel (CardLayout)
        JPanel (BoxLayout)
        JPanel (BoxLayout)
    JPanel (FlowLayout)

It currently displays as so, I want the top bit to expand the both on the x and y axis pushing the "Your Name" to above the status bar.

Example UI

I need to use BoxLayouts it seems so that it flows from top to bottom.

Please help!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 200

Answers (1)

camickr
camickr

Reputation: 324118

I want the top bit to expand the both on the x and y axis pushing the "Your Name" to above the status bar.

Then is sounds like you can use a BorderLayout as the top level panel, instead of the BoxLayout.

Since the default layout manager for the content pane of the frame is a BorderLayout you can just add the panels directly to the content pane of the frame:

frame.add(cardLayoutPanel, BorderLayout.CENTER);
frame.add(flowLayoutPanel, BorderLayout.PAGE_END);

When you add a panel to the "PAGE_END", its preferred height is respected.

When you add a panel to the "CENTER" it gets all the extra spaces available in the frame.

Read the Swing tutorial on Layout Managers for more information and working examples.

I need to use BoxLayouts it seems so that it flows from top to bottom.

You don't need to use a BoxLayout (as demonstrated above), but you can still use it if you want. BoxLayout respects the maximum size of a panel. So you could override the getPreferredSize() method of your panel using the flow layout to return the preferred height of the panel. 

@Override
public Dimension getMaximumSize()
{
    Dimension preferred = super.getPreferredSize();
    Dimension maximum = super.getMaximumSize();
    maximum.height = preferred.height;

    return maximum;
}

Now the height of the flow panel will be respected and all the extra space will go to the other panel.

Upvotes: 1

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