Develop Reference

Creating and Discarding JFrames that run Threads

I'm writing my Tetris using Java Swing. The Game class revolves around a JFrame (frame), which consists of a TetrisPanel extending JPanel (panel) where the blocks fall, a JLabel (pontok) point counter, a JTextArea (rekord_text) showing high scores, and another JPanel (kovi) showing the next block to fall. My idea is that the game has 3 difficulty levels, where the blocks fall with different speed.
I thought the best way of approaching this problem is to create a new JFrame with the components above, but with the blocks' speed set different. I am able to close the old JFrame. However, when the new JFrame opens up, it is only a blank frame, and it won't respond to closing the window.
I should add that TetrisPanel is running a thread, but I am 90% sure I stop that with a volatile boolean.
Constructor of the Game class:
this.difSet(nehezseg); //this function sets the falling velocity
TetrisPanel.stopped = true; //this static member is the volatile boolean responsible for stopping the thread
new_game = false;
frame = new JFrame("Tetris_alpha");
frame.setLayout(new GridBagLayout());
GridBagConstraints c = new GridBagConstraints();
panel = new TetrisPanel();
TetrisPanel.stopped = false;
new Thread(panel).start();
frame.add(panel, c);
pontok = new JLabel ("0");
frame.add(pontok, c);
rekord_text = new JTextArea();
//i set up the area
frame.add(rekord_text, c);
kovi = new NextAktualPanel();
frame.add(kovi, c);
menu = new MyMenu(this);
frame.setJMenuBar(menu);
frame.addWindowListener(new WindowAdapter()
{
#Override
public void windowClosing(WindowEvent e)
{
rekordok.add(panel.getPont());
rekordok.write(f);
e.getWindow().dispose();
System.exit(0);
}
}
);
frame.pack();
frame.setVisible(true);
}
The Game.start() function containing the game loop:
public void start()
{
//game_loop
while (!panel.GameOver() && !new_game)
{
if (panel.aktualLeertDetector())
{
panel.addAktualToBlocks();
panel.addNewAktual(next);
Elem temp = new Elem(0,0,rand.nextInt(7));
while (temp.getTipus() == next.getTipus())
temp = new Elem(0,0,rand.nextInt(7));
next = temp;
kovi.setNextAktual (next);
}
if (!paused)
pontok.setText(Integer.toString(panel.getPont()));
kovi.repaint();
panel.repaint();
}
The function which opens the new frame:
Public void newGame (Game g)
{
Game.new_game = true;
g.frame.dispose();
Game new_game = new Game("easy");
g = new_game;
g.start();
}
And the run() function of TetrisPanel:
public static volatile boolean stopped = false;
#Override
public void run() {
while (!stopped)
{
aktual.zuhan();
this.sorTeleAction();
try {
Thread.sleep(1000);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
Any help would be appreciated, including ideas about different a approach.

Do not use volatile boolean as status variable, use AtomicBoolean instead, volatile it's not the correct way to do this kind of things, and it does not either cause "immediate variable updating"... this is not volatile purpose.
It's not a good idea to start a thread on main AWT thread, you still have to use SwingUtilities.invokeLater(Runnable runnableAction). You can use something like this when launching a Gui Thread:
SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
try {
new Thread(threadAction).start();
} catch (Exception e) {
}
}
});
Hope that this will solve you problem!

Thread NullPointerException

Hey whenever i run this error output.
Exception in thread "Thread-2" java.lang.NullPointerException
at GraphicsTest.render(GraphicsTest.java:50)
at GraphicsTest.run(GraphicsTest.java:58)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
here is the code i cant figure out why it will not work. i have searched online and cant seem to find any answers. i am new and just wanna draw an image to the screen. then maybe try and create a bufferedImage array later on but that is looking like it will be awhile down the road haha. thanks in advance for any help :)
public class GraphicsTest extends JPanel implements Runnable{
public static BufferedImage image;
private boolean isRunning = false;
public void start() {
isRunning = true;
new Thread(this).start();
}
public static void main(String args[]) {
GraphicsTest I = new GraphicsTest();
JFrame window = new JFrame("Test Rendering");
window.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
window.setResizable(false);
window.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
window.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(600, 400));
window.pack();
window.setVisible(true);
I.start();
try {
image = ImageIO.read(new File("Grap/roby.png"));
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
public void render() {
Graphics g = getGraphics();
g.drawImage(image, 0, 0, null);
}
#Override
public void run() {
while(isRunning) {
render();
try {
Thread.sleep(20);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
}

and just wanna draw an image to the screen
Try using something like...
GraphicsTest gt = new GraphicsTest();
try {
image = ImageIO.read(new File("Grap/roby.png"));
I.add(new JLabel(new ImageIcon(image));
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
JFrame window = new JFrame("Test Rendering");
window.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
window.add(gt);
window.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
window.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(600, 400));
window.pack();
window.setVisible(true);
Take a look at How to Use Labels for more details.
Never use getGraphics to try and do custom painting, this is not how painting works in Swing.
If you're really intersted in knowing how painting works, take a look at Painting in AWT and Swing and Performing Custom Painting for more details.
You might like to have a read through Code Conventions for the Java TM Programming Language, it will make it easier for people to read your code and for you to read others

Java mouseClicked complication

Code works, my bad. But I'm still open to suggestions on how to improve or make the code more elegant.
I have created this layout and I want to be able to draw a circle whenever the user clicks on the white area.
Couldn't post an image, so here is the link
The white area is basically a rectangle. But something with my code isn't working, it just doesn't respond to mouse clicks. When I tried to see if it responds to mouseDragged it worked perfectly but this isn't what I need.
Here is my code, some "tests" are put as /comments/ but neither of them work as intended.
I would be very grateful for help. Here is my code:
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.Graphics;
import javax.swing.*;
public class CitiesMapPanel extends JPanel implements MouseListener {
private JButton cmdAddWay, cmdFindPath, cmdClearMap, cmdClearPath;
private JLabel lblFrom, lblTo;
private JTextField txtFrom, txtTo;
public CitiesMapPanel() {
cmdAddWay = new JButton("Add Way");
cmdFindPath = new JButton("Find Path");
cmdClearMap = new JButton("Clear Map");
cmdClearPath = new JButton("Clear Path");
lblFrom = new JLabel("From");
lblTo = new JLabel("To");
txtFrom = new JTextField(6);
txtTo = new JTextField(6);
this.addMouseListener(this);
setLayout(new BorderLayout());
add(buildGui(), BorderLayout.SOUTH);
}
private JPanel buildGui() {
JPanel buttonsBar = new JPanel();
//The "south" of the BorderLayout consist of a (2,4) GridLayout.
buttonsBar.setLayout(new GridLayout(2,4));
buttonsBar.add(lblFrom);
buttonsBar. add(txtFrom);
buttonsBar.add(lblTo);
buttonsBar.add(txtTo);
buttonsBar.add(cmdAddWay);
buttonsBar.add(cmdFindPath);
buttonsBar.add(cmdClearMap);
buttonsBar.add(cmdClearPath);
return buttonsBar;
}
public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
super.paintComponent(g);
g.setColor(Color.white);
g.fillRect(0, 0, this.getSize().height, this.getSize().width);
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
JFrame frame = new JFrame("layout");
frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
frame.setSize(530, 550);
CitiesMapPanel gui = new CitiesMapPanel();
frame.add(gui);
frame.setVisible(true);
}
/*abstract private class MyMouseListner implements MouseListener{
public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e){
int x = e.getX();
int y = e.getY();
Graphics g = getGraphics();
g.setColor(Color.black);
g.fillOval(x,y,15,15);
}
}*/
#Override
public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e) {
int x = e.getX();
int y = e.getY();
Graphics g = getGraphics();
g.setColor(Color.black);
g.fillOval(x,y,15,15);
System.out.println("test");
}
#Override
public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent e) {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
}
#Override
public void mouseExited(MouseEvent e) {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
}
#Override
public void mousePressed(MouseEvent e) {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
}
#Override
public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent e) {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
}
}

The click listener is not the problem. Your approach to painting is simply wrong. You can't do a getGraphic, paint on it, and expect the result to be presented. In Swing (AWT) things work fundamentally different. You need to either create an off screen image that you paint to and that you then present on screen in your paintComponent method, or you need to track the objects you want to paint in a data structure and paint those in your paintComponent method. You can trigger a repaint in your click listener by calling repaint so the UI subsystems knows about the changed state that requires a repaint of your component.
Read more about the basics in the Swing painting tutorial.

Java - How to make the images disappear

Hi I want to make my JPanel disappear so I wrote these lines of code
removeAll();
updateUI();
revalidate();
That only made the JComponents and JButtons disappear. I would like to make the images that I have displayed with the paint method disappear also. If I do setVisible(false), then I cannot add another JPanel behind it.
This is my class:
package screens;
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import javax.swing.*;
public class menuScreen extends JPanel implements MouseListener{
private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
//-------------VARIABLES---------------//
Image wallpaper = (Image)Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getImage(getClass().getResource("images/wallpaper.jpg"));
Image title_text = (Image)Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getImage(getClass().getResource("images/title-text.png"));
ImageIcon startGameimg = new ImageIcon(Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getImage(getClass().getResource("images/startGame.png")));
ImageIcon optionsimg = new ImageIcon(Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getImage(getClass().getResource("images/options.png")));
//JButton start = new JButton(basketball);
JLabel options = new JLabel(optionsimg);
JLabel startGame = new JLabel(startGameimg);
gameScreen gS = new gameScreen();
CardLayout scenechange = new CardLayout();
JPanel scenechange1 = new JPanel (scenechange);
//-------------PAINT FUNCTION----------//
public void paintComponent(Graphics g){
g.drawImage(wallpaper,0,0,this);
g.drawImage(title_text,0,0,this);
//g.drawImage(basketball1,110,180,this);
}
//-------------CONSTRUCTOR-------------//
public menuScreen(){
scenechange.addLayoutComponent(this,"menuScreen");
scenechange.addLayoutComponent(gS,"gameScreen");
//scenechange.show(this,"menuScreen");
this.setLayout(null);
this.add(options);
this.add(startGame);
startGame.setBounds(110,180,110,110);
options.setBounds(110,300,110,110);
startGame.addMouseListener(this);
options.addMouseListener(this);
}
public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e) {
if(e.getSource() == (startGame)){
removeAll();
revalidate();
add(gS);
}
if(e.getSource() == (options)){
setVisible(false);
}
}
public void mousePressed(MouseEvent e) {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
}
public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent e) {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
}
public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent e) {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
}
public void mouseExited(MouseEvent e) {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
}
}//END OF CLASS startingScreen
Thanks in advance.

First, don't call updateUI, it's related to the Look and Feel and not (directly) to updating your components.
If you have provided a custom paint routine within in your panel, then you need away to stop it from painting the images (without preventing it from painting it's own content). removeXxx will remove child components that you have previously added to the container.
A little more code would be useful
UPDATE
Fisrt, the images your painting aren't components of you container, they are been "stamped", you need some way to tell the component not to the paint the images
public void paintComponent(Graphics g){
super.paintComponent(g); // this is super important
if (paintImages){ // you need to define and set this flag
g.drawImage(wallpaper,0,0,this);
g.drawImage(title_text,0,0,this);
}
}
Now, this will stop the images from been painted.
If, however, you no longer want to use the component (ie, you want to remove it from the screen so you can place a new component on the screen in its place), you need to remove this component from it's parent, which Code-Guru has suggested (so I won't steal his answer ;))
UPDATE
Okay, you had a kernel of an idea but either didn't quite know how to implement it or decided to discard it.
Basically, from the looks of your code, you were either trying to, or had, implement a CardLayout, unfortunately, you kind of got the wrong idea with it.
With CardLayout, you need to "controller", a component that is responsible for switching the screens...
public class ScreenController extends JPanel {
private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
//-------------VARIABLES---------------//
MenuScreen ms = new MenuScreen();
GameScreen gs = new GameScreen();
CardLayout sceneChange;
//-------------CONSTRUCTOR-------------//
public ScreenController() {
sceneChange = new CardLayout();
this.setLayout(sceneChange);
add(ms, "menuScreen");
add(gs, "gameScreen");
sceneChange.show(this, "menuScreen");
ms.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
#Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
if (e.getActionCommand().equalsIgnoreCase("startgame")) {
sceneChange.show(ScreenController.this, "gameScreen");
}
}
});
}
}//END OF CLASS startingScreen
Then you have your menu and game screens...
public class MenuScreen extends JPanel implements MouseListener {
private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
//-------------VARIABLES---------------//
//JButton start = new JButton(basketball);
JLabel options = new JLabel("Options");
JLabel startGame = new JLabel(" >> Start << ");
// gameScreen gS = new gameScreen();
BufferedImage wallpaper;
//-------------PAINT FUNCTION----------//
#Override
public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
System.out.println("paint");
super.paintComponent(g);
if (wallpaper != null) {
g.drawImage(wallpaper, 0, 0, this);
}
}
//-------------CONSTRUCTOR-------------//
public MenuScreen() {
// Please handle your exceptions better
try {
wallpaper = ImageIO.read(getClass().getResource("/Menu.png"));
setPreferredSize(new Dimension(wallpaper.getWidth(), wallpaper.getHeight()));
} catch (IOException ex) {
ex.printStackTrace();
}
setLayout(new GridBagLayout());
Cursor cusor = Cursor.getPredefinedCursor(Cursor.HAND_CURSOR);
options.setCursor(cusor);
startGame.setCursor(cusor);
Font font = UIManager.getFont("Label.font").deriveFont(Font.BOLD, 48);
options.setFont(font);
startGame.setFont(font);
GridBagConstraints gbc = new GridBagConstraints();
gbc.gridx = 0;
gbc.gridy = 0;
this.add(options, gbc);
gbc.gridy++;
this.add(startGame, gbc);
startGame.addMouseListener(this);
options.addMouseListener(this);
}
public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e) {
if (e.getSource() == (startGame)) {
fireActionPerformed("startGame");
}
if (e.getSource() == (options)) {
fireActionPerformed("gameOptions");
}
}
public void mousePressed(MouseEvent e) {
}
public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent e) {
}
public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent e) {
}
public void mouseExited(MouseEvent e) {
}
public void addActionListener(ActionListener listener) {
listenerList.add(ActionListener.class, listener);
}
public void removeActionListener(ActionListener listener) {
listenerList.remove(ActionListener.class, listener);
}
protected void fireActionPerformed(String cmd) {
ActionListener[] listeners = listenerList.getListeners(ActionListener.class);
if (listeners != null && listeners.length > 0) {
ActionEvent evt = new ActionEvent(this, ActionEvent.ACTION_PERFORMED, cmd);
for (ActionListener listener : listeners) {
listener.actionPerformed(evt);
}
}
}
}
Menu Screen...
And when you click start...the game screen...
Now this is an EXAMPLE. Please try and take the time to understand what it going on in the code before you march ahead and implement it. I used by own images, you'll need to get your own..

There are several ways to stop your JPanel from "appearing" depending on exactly what you want to accomplish. One was it to to call setOpaque(false);. I'm not entirely sure how this affects custom painting, though.
Another posibility is
Container parent = getParent().remove(this);
parent.validate();
A third posibility is to add a flag in your class which is set when you click on a JLabel (or better yet a JButton -- see comments below). Then in your paintComponent() method you can check the flag and draw accordingly.
Note:
You are incorrectly using a JLabel and mouse events to respond to user input. Typically in a Swing application, we use JButtons and ActionListeners to accomplish what you are trying to do here. One advantage of this is that you only have to implement one method called onActionPerformed() and don't need to worry about adding all the mouse event handlers that you don't want to even respond to.

Do Robot methods need to be run on the event queue?

Robot is part of the AWT library, but it seems quite different from most all the rest of the library. I am creating a Swing GUI that mixes Swing with Java Native Access (JNA) and Robot to allow Java to drive some MS Windows/Citrix work programs. My gut feeling is that since Robot will queue events on the "platform's native input queue" that the last thing I want to do is to run it on the EDT, but on the other hand, most of the classes in the AWT and Swing libraries should be run on the Swing event thread. So to try clarify this in my mind for me let me ask as specific a question as possible:
Should Robot methods (in particular key presses and releases, mouse moves, mouse presses and releases) be run on or off of the Swing event dispatch thread (the EDT)?

The Robot methods you mentioned should not be run on the EDT. Taking a look at the source code revealed that each one of these "event" methods has one thing in common (the afterEvent call):
public synchronized void keyPress(int keycode) {
checkKeycodeArgument(keycode);
peer.keyPress(keycode);
afterEvent();
}
public synchronized void mousePress(int buttons) {
checkButtonsArgument(buttons);
peer.mousePress(buttons);
afterEvent();
}
// etc
private void afterEvent() {
autoWaitForIdle();
autoDelay();
}
private void autoWaitForIdle() {
if (isAutoWaitForIdle) {
waitForIdle();
}
}
public synchronized void waitForIdle() {
checkNotDispatchThread();
/* snip */
}
private void checkNotDispatchThread() {
if (EventQueue.isDispatchThread()) {
throw new IllegalThreadStateException("Cannot call method from the event dispatcher thread");
}
}
If you call any of these methods on the EDT while Robot.isAutoWaitForIdle is true, an exception will be thrown. This stands to reason that even if isAutoWaitForIdle is false, these methods shouldn't be called from the EDT.

API quite exactly talks, then I'm understand that that Robot should be ignore if is invoked from EDT or not
Using the class to generate input events differs from posting events to the AWT event queue or AWT components in that the events are generated in the platform's native input queue.
I'm rellative new in Java, my first touch was Java1.6.009, then I can't compare changes for AWT and (when born) Swing in Java1.3 and rest in Java1.4
my example
import javax.imageio.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import java.awt.image.*;
import java.io.*;
public class CaptureScreen implements ActionListener {
private JFrame f = new JFrame("Screen Capture");
private JPanel pane = new JPanel();
private JButton capture = new JButton("Capture");
private JDialog d = new JDialog();
private JScrollPane scrollPane = new JScrollPane();
private JLabel l = new JLabel();
private Point location;
public CaptureScreen() {
capture.setActionCommand("CaptureScreen");
capture.setFocusPainted(false);
capture.addActionListener(this);
capture.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(300, 50));
pane.add(capture);
f.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
f.add(pane);
f.setLocation(100, 100);
f.pack();
f.setVisible(true);
SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
createPicContainer();
}
});
}
private void createPicContainer() {
l.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(700, 500));
scrollPane = new JScrollPane(l,
ScrollPaneConstants.VERTICAL_SCROLLBAR_AS_NEEDED,
ScrollPaneConstants.HORIZONTAL_SCROLLBAR_AS_NEEDED);
scrollPane.setBackground(Color.white);
scrollPane.getViewport().setBackground(Color.white);
d.setDefaultCloseOperation(JDialog.HIDE_ON_CLOSE);
d.add(scrollPane);
d.pack();
d.setVisible(false);
}
#Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
if (e.getActionCommand().equals("CaptureScreen")) {
Dimension d1 = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getScreenSize(); // gets the screen size
Robot r;
BufferedImage bI;
try {
r = new Robot(); // creates robot not sure exactly how it works
Thread.sleep(1000); // waits 1 second before capture
bI = r.createScreenCapture(new Rectangle(d1)); // tells robot to capture the screen
showPic(bI);
saveImage(bI);
} catch (AWTException e1) {
e1.printStackTrace();
} catch (InterruptedException e2) {
e2.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
private void saveImage(BufferedImage bI) {
try {
ImageIO.write(bI, "JPG", new File("screenShot.jpg"));
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
private void showPic(BufferedImage bI) {
ImageIcon pic = new ImageIcon(bI);
l.setIcon(pic);
l.revalidate();
l.repaint();
d.setVisible(false);
location = f.getLocationOnScreen();
int x = location.x;
int y = location.y;
d.setLocation(x, y + f.getHeight());
SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
d.setVisible(true);
}
});
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
CaptureScreen cs = new CaptureScreen();
}
});
}
}

Amplifying on #mKorbel's thoughtful answer, and confirming his empirical result, note how the various Robot methods delegate to an internal instance of the RobotPeer interface, the native implementation of which varies by platform. Moreover, the methods are synchronized. The synthetic events all arrive on the EventQueue, irrespective of the source.