Thread: Trying to add text from a string to the name of a JPanel (is it possible?)

I am trying to set the size of some of my panels, and since they will all be the same size i thought i could do it using a for loop, in which it loops through the different panels in the array and sets their size.

for example when it is at index 0 then it should have the name of the first panel
i want to set the size for, however i'm not sure how to then get it to extract the word from the variable rather than use the variables name itself as the word?
If you get what Im trying to do here:

	        String[] array = {"pepperoniPanel", "mozarellaPanel", "hawaiianPanel", "meatXtremePanel"};
	        for (int i = 0; i < array.length; i++)
	        {
	        	String current;
	        	current = array[i];
 
	        	current.setMaximumSize(new Dimension(sizeX, sizeY));
	        	current.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(sizeX, sizeY));
 
	        }

You can't really do that. You could have a Map of variable names to JPanels, though. Or you could just add them all to a List.

What? No, if you add them to a List, you can just iterate over the List instead of iterating over an array of variable names. You shouldn't have any repeated code.

Nope. I mean add them to a List, such as an ArrayList.

Recommended reading: Trail: Collections (The Java™ Tutorials)

You could also just have an array of JPanels instead of storing their names in an array. Wouldn't that save you a step?