Java Swing

Chapter 5. Buttons

Buttons

Buttons are simple UI components used to generate events when the user presses them. In AWT, buttons were very basic, able to display only simple text strings. In much the same way as JLabel provided improvements over java.awt.Label, the Swing button classes improve on java.awt.Button and java.awt.Checkbox by introducing the ability to display icons, text, or both. In this section, we’ll introduce both the ButtonModel interface and DefaultButtonModel class (which define the state of the button). Next, we’ll look at the AbstractButton class (which defines much of the functionality for all button types). Finally, we’ll look at four concrete subclasses of AbstractButton and see how they can be grouped together using a ButtonGroup.

Figure 5.1 shows the class hierarchy, with significant relationships between the button-related Swing classes. Notice that, as we discussed in the introductory chapters, each button (AbstractButton) keeps a reference to a ButtonModel, which represents its state.

Figure 5-1. Swing Button class diagram

The JMenuItem class shown here (and its subclasses, not shown) is not covered in this chapter. Instead, they are covered in Chapter 14.

The ButtonModel Interface

The state of any Swing button is maintained by a ButtonModel object. This interface defines methods for reading and writing the model’s properties and for adding and removing ...