Develop Reference

How to make ImageIcon on JLabel update faster with less latency

I am trying to update an ImageIcon on a JLabel which sits on a JLayeredPane, but there is a lot of latency between when the setting thread sends the proper state to the JLabel object and when the GUI displays the ImageIcon of the proper state. The following code is an example of the issue, look for the difference in time between the print of the button being on/off and when the displayed icon gets lighter/darker.
The setting thread:
new Thread(new Runnable() { // setting thread
#Override
public void run() {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
try {
while(true) {
System.out.println("testButton on"); // print that the button is on
testButton.updateState(1); // set button state to on
Thread.sleep(70 + random.nextInt(500)); //sleep between 70 and 570 milliseconds
System.out.println("testButton off");// print that the button is off
testButton.updateState(0); // set button state to off
Thread.sleep(70 + random.nextInt(500)); // sleep between 70 and 570 milliseconds
}
} catch(Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}).start();
The button object:
class Button extends JLabel {
ImageIcon released;
ImageIcon pressed;
String text;
public Button(int x, int y, String text) {
released = new ImageIcon("src/components/images/button.png");
pressed = new ImageIcon("src/components/images/buttonDown.png");
setBounds(x,y, 100, 100);
this.text = text;
setIcon(released);
}
public void updateState(int data) {
if (data == 1) {
setIcon(pressed);
}
else {
setIcon(released);
}
}
}
The ImageIcons are only 325 bytes, so what might be causing the latency? I looked up about the Event Dispatcher Thread and many people say it should be instantaneous for an image to get painted.
End goal: Have many button objects on screen with the setting thread calling them to update based on randomly occurring actions. The displayed icon for a specific button object should change immediately as it is set in the function. The setting thread will not be constantly looping, instead loop once for every action sent (it is twice here just to show the issue).
Any suggestions or things to try I will test as soon as I can.
Edit: In the end the thread that gets the information will call to a device driver in Linux where it will wait for a response and only when it gets a response will it need to update the window. From what I know timer is used to update something at regular intervals, but I am likely wrong.

As explained in the comments running long processes on the The Event Dispatch Thread blocks it, so it does not respond to changes.
Also you are not suppose to update Swing components from other (not EDT) threads.
You need to use Swing tools like SwingWorker or Timer.
The following mcve demonstrates a simple slide-show using Timer:
import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.URL;
import java.util.Random;
import javax.swing.ImageIcon;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JLabel;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.SwingConstants;
import javax.swing.Timer;
public class ChangeButtonIcon extends JPanel{
private final URL[] urls = {
new URL("https://findicons.com/files/icons/345/summer/128/cake.png"),
new URL("http://icons.iconarchive.com/icons/atyourservice/service-categories/128/Sweets-icon.png"),
new URL("https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS_FkBgG3_ux0kCbfG8mcRHvdk1dYbZYsm2SFMS01YvA6B_zfH_kg"),
};
private int iconNumber = 0;
private final JButton button;
private boolean stop = true;
private final Random random;
private static final int MIN_DELAY = 70, DELAY = 500;
private Timer timer;
public ChangeButtonIcon() throws IOException {
random = new Random();
button = new JButton();
button.setIcon(new ImageIcon(urls[iconNumber]));
button.setHorizontalTextPosition(SwingConstants.CENTER);
button.addActionListener(e -> startStopSlideShow());
add(button);
}
private void startStopSlideShow(){
stop = ! stop;
if(stop){
timer.stop();
return;
}
timer = new Timer( MIN_DELAY+ random.nextInt(DELAY), (e)->swapIcon());
timer.start();
}
private void swapIcon() {
iconNumber = iconNumber >= urls.length -1 ? 0 : iconNumber+1;
button.setIcon(new ImageIcon(urls[iconNumber]));
}
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException{
JFrame window = new JFrame();
window.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
window.add(new ChangeButtonIcon());
window.add(new JLabel("Click image to start / stop"), BorderLayout.PAGE_END);
window.pack();
window.setVisible(true);
}
}

Trying to start program on JButton press

I am trying to make a simple program that will ask the user a question and then compare their answer with a stored correct answer. The problem seems to be that the main loop of the program is not running when I click the Ready JButton.
I tried changing the main method to another non-default name and adding a call to it in the actionPerformed() method, and it did seem to execute the loop at least once, but then led to not being able to close the applet without the task manager once I clicked the button. I don't know if that means it hit an endless loop or what.
I'm sure there is more to fix in this code besides this issue, but I cannot make any progress on that without clearing this up first. If there is a problem with the way I went about creating the GUI please let me know. I tried to base it off of an assignment I did that worked just fine, so I don't know whether or not that is the issue.
Any help provided is appreciated.
Here is the code:
import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;
public class Langarden_App extends JApplet{
private int width = 800, height = 600;
private LangardenPanel langPanel;
public void init(){
langPanel = new LangardenPanel();
getContentPane().add(langPanel);
setSize(width, height);
}
}
And the class with the logic
import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;
import java.util.*;
public class LangardenPanel extends JPanel{
private static JButton submit;
private static JButton ready = new JButton("Ready");
private static JLabel instruct;
private JTextField input = new JTextField(100);
private static String inString;
private static ArrayList<String> questions;
private static ArrayList<String> answers;
private static Random rand = new Random();
public LangardenPanel(){
questions = new ArrayList<String> (Arrays.asList("¿Qué es la palabra para 'inveirno' en ingles?", "¿Qué es la forma de 'yo' del verbo 'venir'?"));
answers = new ArrayList<String> (Arrays.asList("winter", "voy"));
instruct = new JLabel("Welcome to Langarden! Press Submit to begin. You have one minute and three attempts for each question.");
submit = new JButton("Submit");
this.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
add(BorderLayout.SOUTH, ready);
add(BorderLayout.NORTH, instruct);
add(BorderLayout.CENTER, input);
ready.addActionListener(new SubListener());
}
public static void main(String[] args){
try{
TimeUnit.SECONDS.sleep(3);
} catch (InterruptedException e){
}
System.out.println("Setting text");
instruct.setText("Alright! Let's Go!");
try{
TimeUnit.SECONDS.sleep(1);
} catch (InterruptedException e){
}
do{
System.out.println("Running loop");
int qnum = rand.nextInt(questions.size());
instruct.setText(questions.get(qnum));
for (int i=0; i<3; i++){
try {
TimeUnit.SECONDS.sleep(60);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
}
if(checkAnswer(qnum, inString)){
instruct.setText("Correct!");
break;
} else {
instruct.setText("Try again...\n" + questions.get(qnum));
}
}
instruct.setText("The correct answer was " + answers.get(qnum));
try{
TimeUnit.SECONDS.sleep(2);
} catch (InterruptedException e){
}
questions.remove(qnum);
answers.remove(qnum);
instruct.setText("Would you like to continue? Enter No and click Submit to exit.");
} while (!inString.equalsIgnoreCase("No") && questions.size() != 0);
instruct.setText("Congratulations, you have completed this module!");
}
private static boolean checkAnswer(int qnum, String inString) {
if (answers.get(qnum).equalsIgnoreCase(inString))
return true;
return false;
}
private class SubListener implements ActionListener{
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e){
System.out.println("Button Pressed!");
if(e.getSource() == ready){
add(BorderLayout.SOUTH, submit);
submit.addActionListener(new SubListener());
} else {
inString = input.getText();
}
}
}
}

Get rid of the main method. If this is running as an applet, then the program has no business having a main method.
Make all fields non-static. Yes all.
Get rid of the while-true loop. If this runs, this will squelch your Swing event thread rendering your GUI frozen and helpless. Use a Swing Timer instead as a "pseudo" loop. Please check out the Swing Timer Tutorial for more on this.
Any time you add a component to a container, you should call revalidate() and repaint() on that same container so that the container's layout managers can layout the new component, and so that the OS can repaint over any "dirty" pixels.
Rather than add a new JButton as you're doing, much better is to swap components using a CardLayout. The tutorial can be found here: CardLayout tutorial.

Run and pause a GUI background thread by clicking a button

I need to run a background thread in my Java GUI that only runs when I click a button and pauses when I click that button again. I am not exactly sure how to set this up, but I have placed a thread in my constructor and the while loop within is set to go through when I set a specific boolean to TRUE. One button switches from setting this boolean TRUE or FALSE.
Everything else I have in this GUI works fine. When I tried debugging the thread, it actually works as I step through the thread but nothing when I try running the GUI completely. The GUI is rather large so I'm gonna put up a portion of the constructor and the action listener of the button. The rest of the code is unnecessary since it works just fine. I need to know what I am doing wrong here:
public BasketballGUI() {
// certain labels and buttons
Thread runningSim = new Thread() {
public void run() {
while(simRun) {
// do stuff here
}
}
};
runningSim.start();
}
// other GUI stuff
// actionListener that should run the thread.
class SimButtonListener implements ActionListener {
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent arg0) {
if(!simRun) {
simRun = true;
sim.setText("Pause Simulator");
}
else if(simRun) {
simRun = false;
sim.setText("Run Simulator");
}
// other stuff in this actionListener
}
}

Establish a Swing based Timer with an ActionListener that will be called repeatedly.
In the actionPerformed(ActionEvent) method call repaint().
Start the timer (Timer.start()) when the user clicks Start
Stop the timer (Timer.stop()) when the user clicks Stop
If you cannot get it working from that description, I suggest you post an SSCCE of your best attempt.
I thought I had one 'lying around'.. Try this working SSCCE which uses images created in this SSCCE.

I could see this background thread useful for a Java GUI when handling button events to affect something like a text area or progress bar.
For the sake of argument, I will build you a tiny GUI that affects a Text Area. I hope this helps you.
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicBoolean;
import javax.swing.*;
public class TestClass extends JPanel {
super("TestClass - Title");
private AtomicBoolean paused;
private JTextArea jta;
private JButton btn;
private Thread thread;
public TestClass() {
paused = new AtomicBoolean(false);
jta = new JTextArea(100, 100);
btn = new JButton();
initialize();
}
public void initialize() {
jta.setLineWrap(true);
jta.setWrapStyleWord(true);
add(new JScrollPane(jta));
btn.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(100, 100));
btn.setText("Pause");
btn.addActionListener(new ButtonListener());
add(btn);
Runnable runnable = new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
while(true) {
for(int i = 0; i < Integer.MAX_VALUE; i++) {
if(paused.get()) {
synchronized(thread) {
try {
thread.wait();
} catch(InterruptedException e) {
}
}
}
}
jta.append(Integer.toString(i) + ", ");
try {
Thread.sleep(500);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
}
}
}
};
thread = new Thread(runnable);
thread.start();
}
#Override
public Dimension getPreferredSize() {
return new Dimension(100, 30);
}
class ButtonListener implements ActionListener {
#Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event) {
if(!paused.get()) {
btn.setText("Start");
paused.set(true);
} else {
btn.setText("Pause");
paused.set(false);
synchronized(thread) {
thread.notify();
}
}
}
}
}
Main class to call everything.
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.SwingUtilities;
public class MainClass {
public static void main(final String[] arg) {
SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
JFrame frame = new JFrame();
frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
frame.add(new TestClass());
frame.pack();
frame.setVisible(true);
frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
}
});
}
}
I did not test this code to see if it works exactly, Its main goal is to break you through your coders block and use my components to fix your issue. Hope this helped. Need anything else Email me at DesignatedSoftware#gmail.com

Swing - Thread.sleep() stop JTextField.setText() working [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Closed 10 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
using sleep() for a single thread
I'm having issues with JTextField.setText() when using Thread.sleep(). This is for a basic calculator I'm making. When the input in the input field is not of the correct format I want "INPUT ERROR" to appear in the output field for 5 seconds and then for it to be cleared. The setText() method did work when I just set the text once to "INPUT ERROR" and by printing out the text in between I found it does work with both that and the setText("") one after the other. The problem arises when I put the Thread.sleep() between them.
Here's a SSCCE version of the code:
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;
import javax.swing.*;
public class Calc {
static Calc calc = new Calc();
public static void main(String args[]) {
GUI gui = calc.new GUI();
}
public class GUI implements ActionListener {
private JButton equals;
private JTextField inputField, outputField;
public GUI() {
createFrame();
}
public void createFrame() {
JFrame baseFrame = new JFrame("Calculator");
baseFrame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
JPanel contentPane = new JPanel();
BoxLayout layout = new BoxLayout(contentPane, BoxLayout.Y_AXIS);
contentPane.setLayout(layout);
baseFrame.setContentPane(contentPane);
baseFrame.setSize(320, 100);
equals = new JButton("=");
equals.addActionListener(this);
inputField = new JTextField(16);
inputField.setHorizontalAlignment(JTextField.TRAILING);
outputField = new JTextField(16);
outputField.setHorizontalAlignment(JTextField.TRAILING);
outputField.setEditable(false);
contentPane.add(inputField);
contentPane.add(outputField);
contentPane.add(equals);
contentPane.getRootPane().setDefaultButton(equals);
baseFrame.setResizable(false);
baseFrame.setLocation(100, 100);
baseFrame.setVisible(true);
}
/**
* When an action event takes place, the source is identified and the
* appropriate action is taken.
*/
#Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
if (e.getSource() == equals) {
inputField.setText(inputField.getText().replaceAll("\\s", ""));
String text = inputField.getText();
System.out.println(text);
Pattern equationPattern = Pattern.compile("[\\d(][\\d-+*/()]+[)\\d]");
boolean match = equationPattern.matcher(text).matches();
System.out.println(match);
if (match) {
// Another class calculates
} else {
try {
outputField.setText("INPUT ERROR"); // This doesn't appear
Thread.sleep(5000);
outputField.setText("");
} catch (InterruptedException e1) {
}
}
}
}
}
}
I'm not actually using a nested class but I wanted it to be able to be contained in one class for you. Sorry about how the GUI looks but again this was to cut down the code. The the important section (if (e.getSource() == equals)) remains unchanged from my code. The simplest way to give an incorrect input is to use letters.

When you use Thread.sleep() you're doing it on the main thread. This freezes the gui for five seconds then it updates the outputField. When that happens, it uses the last set text which is blank.
It's much better to use Swing Timers and here's an example that does what you're trying to accomplish:
if (match) {
// Another class calculates
} else {
outputField.setText("INPUT ERROR");
ActionListener listener = new ActionListener(){
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event){
outputField.setText("");
}
};
Timer timer = new Timer(5000, listener);
timer.setRepeats(false);
timer.start();
}

As Philip Whitehouse states in his answer, you are blocking the swing Event Dispatch Thread with the Thread.sleep(...) call.
Given that you've taken the time to set up an ActionListener already, it would probably be easiest to use a javax.swing.Timer to control clearing the text. To do this, you could add a field to your GUI class:
private Timer clearTimer = new Timer(5000, this);
In the constructor for GUI, turn off the repeats feature, as you really only need a one-shot:
public GUI() {
clearTimer.setRepeats(false);
createFrame();
}
Then, actionPerformed can be modified to use this to start the timer/clear the field:
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
if (e.getSource() == equals) {
inputField.setText(inputField.getText().replaceAll("\\s", ""));
String text = inputField.getText();
System.out.println(text);
Pattern equationPattern = Pattern.compile("[\\d(][\\d-+*/()]+[)\\d]");
boolean match = equationPattern.matcher(text).matches();
System.out.println(match);
if (match) {
// Another class calculates
} else {
clearTimer.restart();
outputField.setText("INPUT ERROR"); // This doesn't appear
}
} else if (e.getSource() == clearTimer) {
outputField.setText("");
}
}

You're doing a Thread.sleep() in the Swing main thread. This is NOT good practice. You need to use a SwingWorker thread at best.
What's happening is that it's running the first line, hitting Thread.sleep().
This prevents the (main) EDT thread from doing any of the repaints (as well as preventing the next line executing).
You should use a javax.swing.Timer to setup the delayed reaction and not put sleep() calls in the main thread.

ActionListener call blocks MouseClick event

I have a window with a MenuItem "maddbound3" with the following ActionListener:
maddbound3.addActionListener
(
new ActionListener()
{
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
{
menu_addbound3();
}
}
);
When the menu is clicked this listener calls menu_addbound3() below:
void menu_addbound3()
{
while(getEditMode() != EditMode.NONE)
{
System.out.println("!... " + getEditMode());
synchronized(this)
{
try
{
wait();
}
catch(InterruptedException e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
}
A MouseClicked event alters the value of the edit mode and issues a notifyAll() so that the while loop should exit. However, tests have shown that when the system is running through the while loop, the MouseClicked event never occurs on clicking the mouse.
Does the ActionListener block the MouseClicked event? How can I resolve this issue?
Thanks

Don't have a while(true) on the Swing event thread, and likewise don't call wait() on the Swing event thread -- you'll freeze the whole GUI making it completely unresponsive. You need to understand that the main Swing event thread or "event dispatch thread" is responsible for all Swing drawing and user interaction, and so if you tie it up with long-running or freezing code, you lock your entire GUI.
Instead, change the state of your program -- perhaps by setting a variable or two, and have the behavior of your program depend on this state. If you need more specific advice, please tell us what behavior you're trying to achieve, and we can perhaps give you a better way of doing it.
For more on the Swing event thread, please read: Lesson: Concurrency in Swing
Edit
You state:
When the user clicks the menu item I want to obtain information via a series of "discrete" mouse clicks from the window. Hence, on clicking the menu, the user would be prompted to "select a point in the window". So, what I need is for my ActionListener function (menu_addbound3) to then wait for a mouse click. Hence the wait/notify setup. A mouse click changes the edit_mode and notifyAll() causes the wait in the while loop to exit which then causes the while loop to exit and I can then prompt for my next bit of information within the menu_addbound3 function, repeating this as as I need to.
Thanks for the clarification, and now I can definitely tell you that you are doing it wrong, that you most definitely do not want to use the while loop or wait or notify. There are many ways to solve this issue, one could be to use some boolean or enum variables to give the program a state and then alter its behavior depending on the state. Your EditMode enum can be used in the MouseListener to let it know that its active, and then you could also give the MouseListener class a boolean variable windowPointSelected, set to false, and then only set it true after the first click has been made.
Edit 2
For example:
import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.Dimension;
import java.awt.Point;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.MouseAdapter;
import java.awt.event.MouseEvent;
import javax.swing.*;
#SuppressWarnings("serial")
public class ProgState extends JPanel {
private static final int PREF_W = 400;
private static final int PREF_H = PREF_W;
private static final Color EDIT_COLOR = Color.red;
private EditMode editMode = EditMode.NONE;
private boolean firstPointSelected = false;
private JMenuBar jMenuBar = new JMenuBar();
private JTextField firstPointField = new JTextField(15);
private JTextField secondPointField = new JTextField(15);
public ProgState() {
add(firstPointField);
add(secondPointField);
JMenu menu = new JMenu("Menu");
menu.add(new JMenuItem(new AbstractAction("Edit") {
#Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent arg0) {
setEditMode(EditMode.EDITING);
setFirstPointSelected(false);
}
}));
jMenuBar.add(menu);
addMouseListener(new MouseAdapter() {
#Override
public void mousePressed(MouseEvent mEvt) {
if (getEditMode() == EditMode.EDITING) {
Point p = mEvt.getPoint();
String pStr = String.format("[%d, %d]", p.x, p.y);
if (!isFirstPointSelected()) {
firstPointField.setText(pStr);
setFirstPointSelected(true);
} else {
secondPointField.setText(pStr);
setEditMode(EditMode.NONE);
}
}
}
});
}
public void setEditMode(EditMode editMode) {
this.editMode = editMode;
Color c = editMode == EditMode.NONE ? null : EDIT_COLOR;
setBackground(c);
}
public EditMode getEditMode() {
return editMode;
}
public void setFirstPointSelected(boolean firstPointSelected) {
this.firstPointSelected = firstPointSelected;
}
public boolean isFirstPointSelected() {
return firstPointSelected;
}
#Override
public Dimension getPreferredSize() {
return new Dimension(PREF_W, PREF_H);
}
public JMenuBar getJMenuBar() {
return jMenuBar;
}
private static void createAndShowGui() {
ProgState progState = new ProgState();
JFrame frame = new JFrame("EditMode");
frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
frame.getContentPane().add(progState);
frame.setJMenuBar(progState.getJMenuBar());
frame.pack();
frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
frame.setVisible(true);
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
createAndShowGui();
}
});
}
}
enum EditMode {
NONE, EDITING
}

From the discussion it seems that having your class assume a number of states is the best way to proceed. We can achieve this by one or more enum variables. The reason I found this so hard to grasp initially is that I couldn't see the benefit of having all of ones code in the MouseClicked function. This is ugly and unmanageable at best.
However, using multiple enums and splitting processing into a number of external functions, we do indeed achieve a nice system for what we want.