Getting data back from a child form

Hello everyone

I am frantically trying to learn Java and have now found myself wondering if I am passing variables back from a temporary child dialog back to the caller correctly. If somebody would be so good, I would appreciate it if you could look at my example classes and tell me if I am doing it correctly. If not, why not!

For this example, in C++ I would probably pass in a pointer and have the caller updated that way but of course Java doesn't support primitive type pointers. 8-x

Code :

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import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JTextField;
 
import java.awt.Dimension;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
 
public class Example extends JFrame {
 
    //Instantiate the container object
      Container c = new Container();
 
    public static void main(String[] args) {
 
        Example w = new Example();
        w.initGUI();
 
    }
 
    private void initGUI(){
 
        this.setDefaultCloseOperation(EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
 
        // SETUP BASIC GUI COMPONENTS
        JPanel p = new JPanel();
        JButton b = new JButton("CLICK ME");
        final JTextField tf = new JTextField();
 
        // SETUP ACTION LISTENER
        b.addActionListener(new ActionListener(){
            @Override
            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt){
 
                DialogHarvester dialog = new DialogHarvester(c);
                dialog.setModal(true);
                dialog.setVisible(true);
 
                tf.setText(c.userParameter);
 
                return;             
            }
        });
 
        // SIZE THEM AND ADD TO THE FORM
        tf.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(100,25));
        tf.setEditable(false);
        p.add(b);
        p.add(tf);
 
        this.add(p);
        this.setSize(200, 100);
        this.setVisible(true);
 
        return;
    }
 
}

---

AND

Code :

---

import java.awt.Dimension;
import javax.swing.JDialog;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.JTextField;
import javax.swing.JButton;
 
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
 
 
public class DialogHarvester extends JDialog{
 
    Container c;
    JTextField t;
 
    DialogHarvester(Container con){
 
        setDefaultCloseOperation(DISPOSE_ON_CLOSE);
        c = con;
        this.initGUI();
 
    }
 
    private void initGUI(){
 
        // SETUP BASIC GUI COMPONENTS
        JPanel p = new JPanel();
        JButton b = new JButton("OK");
 
        t = new JTextField();
 
 
        // SETUP ACTION LISTENER
        b.addActionListener(new ActionListener(){
            @Override
            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt){
                exitForm();
            }
        });
 
        // SIZE THEM AND ADD TO THE FORM
        t.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(100,25));
        p.add(t);
        p.add(b);
 
        this.add(p);
        this.setSize(100,100);
 
    }
 
    private void exitForm(){
 
        c.userParameter = t.getText();
        this.dispose();
    }
 
}

---

AND

Code :

---

public class Container {
 
    Container(){}
 
    public String userParameter;
 
}

---

Many thanks for reading and I thank people in advance for helping me yet again.

Regards
Nikki

Well, does it work how you expect? Does the data get passed how you want it to?

You might also want to look into this: How to Make Dialogs (The Java™ Tutorials > Creating a GUI With JFC/Swing > Using Swing Components)

Hi, thank you.

Yes, it does, works perfectly! I was really thinking about best practice.

Thank you

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ishtar

Hi, thank you.

Yes, it does, works perfectly! I was really thinking about best practice.

Thank you

---

I really wouldn't worry about best practices at this point. If it works, and if you understand why it works, that's probably good enough for now. No matter what code you write, in six months you're going to look back and wonder what you were thinking.

That being said, I think returning something in the way outlined in the tutorial I gave you is the best practice. At the very least, you might want to call a set function instead of accessing the variable directly.

Thank you very much Kevin.

I'm off to do some reading....