Java Swing

Icons

Swing introduces the concept of an icon for use in a variety of components. The Icon interface and ImageIcon class make dealing with simple images extremely easy.

The Icon Interface

The Icon interface is very simple, specifying just three methods used to determine the size of the Icon and to display it. Implementors of this interface are free to store and display the image in any way, providing a great deal of flexibility. In other words, icons don’t have to be bitmaps or GIF images, but are free to render themselves any way they choose; as we’ll see later, an icon can simply draw on the component if that’s more efficient. The examples at the end of this section show a couple of different ways the interface might be implemented.

Properties

The Icon interface defines the properties listed in Table 4.3. The iconHeight and iconWidth properties specify the size of the Icon in pixels.

Table 4-3. Icon Properties

Property	Data Type	get	is	set	bound	Default Value
iconHeight	int	•
iconWidth	int	•

Method

public abstract void paintIcon(Component c, Graphics g, int x, int y)

Paints the Icon at the specified location on the given Graphics. The Component is provided to allow its properties (such as foreground or background color) to be used when painting, or to allow the component to be used as an image observer (see Section 4.2.2, later in this chapter).

Implementing Your Own Icons

Here’s a class that implements the Icon interface and uses ovals as simple icons:

// OvalIcon.java
//
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;

// A simple Icon implementation that draws ovals
public class OvalIcon implements Icon {

  public OvalIcon(int w, int h) {
    width = w;
    height = h;
  }

  public void paintIcon(Component c, Graphics g, int x, int y) {
    g.drawOval(x, y, width-1, height-1);
  }

  public int getIconWidth() { return width; }
  public int getIconHeight() { return height; }

  private int width, height;
}

And a simple class that creates a few labels to show how it works:

// TestOval.java
//
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;

public class TestOval {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    JFrame f = new JFrame();
    f.addWindowListener(new BasicWindowMonitor());

    JLabel label1 = new JLabel(new OvalIcon(20,50));
    JLabel label2 = new JLabel(new OvalIcon(50,20));
    JLabel label3 = new JLabel
      ("Round!", new OvalIcon(60,60), SwingConstants.CENTER);
    label3.setHorizontalTextPosition(SwingConstants.CENTER);

    Container c = f.getContentPane();
    c.setLayout(new FlowLayout());
    c.add(label1);
    c.add(label2);
    c.add(label3);
    f.pack();
    f.setVisible(true);
  }
}

Running this test program produces the display shown in Figure 4.6.

Figure 4-6. OvalIcon labels

Dynamic Icons

Icons are under no obligation to paint themselves the same way every time they are displayed. It’s perfectly reasonable (and often quite useful) to have an icon that uses some sort of state information to determine how to display itself. In the next example, we create two sliders (JSlider is explained in detail in Chapter 6) that can be used to change the width and height of a dynamic icon.

// DynamicIconExample
//
import javax.swing.*;
import javax.swing.event.*;
import java.awt.*;

// Example of an icon that changes form.
public class DynamicIconExample {
  public static void main(String[] args) {

    // Create a couple sliders to control the icon size
    final JSlider width = new JSlider(JSlider.HORIZONTAL, 1, 150, 75);
    final JSlider height = new JSlider(JSlider.VERTICAL, 1, 150, 75);

    // A little Icon class that uses the current slider values.
    class DynamicIcon implements Icon {
      public int getIconWidth() { return width.getValue(); }
      public int getIconHeight() { return height.getValue(); }

      public void paintIcon(Component c, Graphics g, int x, int y) {
        g.fill3DRect(x, y, getIconWidth(), getIconHeight(), true);
      }
    };
    Icon icon = new DynamicIcon();
    final JLabel dynamicLabel = new JLabel(icon);

    // A listener to repaint the icon when sliders are adjusted.
    class Updater implements ChangeListener {
      public void stateChanged(ChangeEvent ev) {
        dynamicLabel.repaint();
      }
    };
    Updater updater = new Updater();

    width.addChangeListener(updater);
    height.addChangeListener(updater);

    // Lay it all out
    JFrame f = new JFrame();
    f.addWindowListener(new BasicWindowMonitor());

    Container c = f.getContentPane();
    c.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
    c.add(width, BorderLayout.NORTH);
    c.add(height, BorderLayout.WEST);
    c.add(dynamicLabel, BorderLayout.CENTER);
    f.setSize(210,210);
    f.setVisible(true);
  }
}

Figure 4.7 shows the dynamic icon in its initial state, and then again after we’ve moved the sliders around a bit.

Figure 4-7. A dynamic Icon; its size is controlled by the sliders

The important thing to notice is that the Icon class does not actually store any information. In this case, we’ve made the Icon class an inner class, giving it direct access to the sliders. Whenever the icon is told to paint itself, it gets its width and height from the values of the sliders. You could also choose to make your Icon class an event listener and have it update itself according to changes in certain events. The options here are wide open.

No matter how your icon gets its data, you need to make sure that any time you want to change the way the icon looks, you trigger a repaint of the icon. In this example, we’ve done this by listening to change events from the sliders and calling repaint() on the label that’s holding the icon any time one of the sliders changes.

The ImageIcon Class

Swing provides a concrete implementation of the Icon interface which is considerably more useful than our OvalIcon class. ImageIcon uses a java.awt.Image object to store and display any graphic and provides synchronous image loading (i.e., the Image is loaded completely before returning), making ImageIcons very powerful and easy to use. You can even use an ImageIcon to display an animated GIF.89a, making the ubiquitous “animation applet” as simple as this:

// AnimationApplet.java
//
import javax.swing.*;

// A simple animation applet
public class AnimationApplet extends JApplet {
  public void init() {
    ImageIcon icon = new ImageIcon("images/rolling.gif");    // animated gif
    getContentPane().add(new JLabel(icon));
  }
}

All we did here was load an animated GIF in the init() method and then add it to the applet in start(). For more information on JApplet, see Chapter 8.

Properties

The ImageIcon class defines the properties listed in Table 4.4. The description property allows an arbitrary description of the image to be specified. One possible use of this property might be to give a blind user an audio description of the image.

Table 4-4. ImageIcon Properties

Property	Data Type	get	is	set	bound	Default Value
description	String	•		•		null
iconHeight*	int	•				-1
iconWidth*	int	•				-1
image	Image	•		•		null
imageLoadStatus	int	•				0
imageObserver	ImageObserver	•		•		null

The iconHeight and iconWidth properties default to -1 if no image is loaded by the constructor, while the image property simply contains the Image object rendered by the icon. ImageLoadStatus indicates the success or failure of the image load process, using the constants defined in java.awt.MediaTracker (ABORTED, ERRORED, or COMPLETE). The default for this property is zero, which does not map to any of these constants.

The imageObserver property contains the ImageObserver specified to receive notifications of changes to the image. If this property is null (as it is by default), the component containing the icon will be treated as the image observer when the image is painted.

Figure 4.8 shows a class diagram for ImageIcon and the classes related to it.

Figure 4-8. ImageIcon class diagram

Serialization

Like most Swing classes, ImageIcon implements Serializable. The keen observer may see a problem with this: the java.awt.Image class used by ImageIcon is not serializable. By default, this would keep ImageIcon objects from serializing properly. The good news is that ImageIcon implements the readObject() and writeObject() methods, so that the pixel representation of the image is stored and retrieved correctly.

Protected Constants

The protected constants defined in ImageIcon are in Table 4.5.

Table 4-5. ImageIcon Constants

Constant	Type	Description
component	Component	An empty-implementation inner class of Component used only to satisfy the MediaTracker constructor signature.
tracker	MediaTracker	The MediaTracker used by all ImageIcons when loading images.

Constructors

ImageIcon()

Creates an uninitialized ImageIcon.

ImageIcon(Image image), ImageIcon(Image image, String description)

Create ImageIcon objects from existing images. A textual description of the image may be provided. If no description is provided, an attempt is made to retrieve the “comment” property from the input Image. If this is a non-null string, it will be used as the description.

ImageIcon(String filename), ImageIcon(String filename, String description)

Create ImageIcon objects from the contents of the specified GIF or JPEG file. The image is guaranteed to be completely loaded (unless an error occurs) when the constructor returns.

ImageIcon(URL location), ImageIcon(URL location, String description)

Create ImageIcon objects from the contents of the specified URL. The image is guaranteed to be completely loaded (unless an error occurs) when the constructor returns.

public ImageIcon(byte imageData[]), public ImageIcon(byte imageData[], String description)

Create ImageIcon objects from an array of bytes containing an image in a supported format, such as GIF or JPEG. The image is guaranteed to be completely loaded (unless an error occurs) when the constructor returns.

User Interface Method

public synchronized void paintIcon(Component c, Graphics g, int x, int y)

Paints the Image at the specified location on the input Graphics. The given Component is passed to the Graphic’s drawImage() method as the ImageObserver (recall that java.awt.Component implements ImageObserver), if no image observer has been explicitly set.

Protected Method

protected void loadImage(Image image)

Called by the constructors and setImage(). It uses a java.awt.MediaTracker object to load an image synchronously. On completion, the image is guaranteed to be completely loaded, unless an error occurred, in which case the imageLoadStatus property will reflect the error.