CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaswing
gorootde
gorootde

Reputation: 4073

How to use a JPanel as JButton?

I must use a swing-ui designer tool to create my UI, that only supports graphically editing JPanels. Those panels (they basically contain complex button designs) to work like a JButton. I cannot use anything other than JPanel as base class of these panels (UI editor limitation).

What is the most generic solution to do this?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1878

Answers (2)

Arnaud
Arnaud

Reputation: 17524

Here is a quick demo, to show you how you could use borders to simulate a button.

The demo also reacts to mouse and key events :

import java.awt.event.KeyAdapter;
import java.awt.event.KeyEvent;
import java.awt.event.MouseAdapter;
import java.awt.event.MouseEvent;

import javax.swing.BorderFactory;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.border.Border;
import javax.swing.border.EtchedBorder;

public class JPanelButton extends JPanel {

    Border raisedetched = BorderFactory.createEtchedBorder(EtchedBorder.RAISED);
    Border loweredetched = BorderFactory.createEtchedBorder(EtchedBorder.LOWERED);

    public static void main(final String[] args) {

        JFrame frame = new JFrame();

        final JPanelButton panel = new JPanelButton();
        panel.raiseBorder();

        panel.addMouseListener(new MouseAdapter() {

            @Override
            public void mousePressed(final MouseEvent e) {
                panel.lowerBorder();

            }

            @Override
            public void mouseReleased(final MouseEvent e) {
                panel.raiseBorder();

            }

        });

        panel.setFocusable(true); // you need this or the panel won't get the key events
        panel.addKeyListener(new KeyAdapter() {

            @Override
            public void keyPressed(final KeyEvent e) {
                panel.lowerBorder();

            }

            @Override
            public void keyReleased(final KeyEvent e) {
                panel.raiseBorder();

            }
        });

        frame.setContentPane(panel);
        frame.setSize(100, 100);
        frame.setVisible(true);

    }

    public void raiseBorder() {

        setBorder(raisedetched);
    }

    public void lowerBorder() {

        setBorder(loweredetched);
    }

}

Upvotes: 5

xenteros
xenteros

Reputation: 15842

Simply add MouseListener.

JPanel jp = new JPanel();
jp.addMouseListener(new MouseAdapter(){
    public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e) {
        System.out.println("Clicked");
    }

});

If this answer isn't specific enough, leave a comment and I'll give you more explanation.

Upvotes: 1

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