An action listener will be called when an enter key is pressed while typing in the field. From the JTextfield Javadoc :
How the text field consumes VK_ENTER events depends on whether the text field has any action listeners. If so, then VK_ENTER results in the listeners getting an ActionEvent, and the VK_ENTER event is consumed.
Here is your example modified to work with an action listener :
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JTextField;
public class testText {
public static void main(String[] args){
JFrame frame = new JFrame();
final JTextField text = new JTextField();
frame.add(text);
frame.setVisible(true);
text.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
@Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
System.out.println(text.getText());
}
});
}
}
And here is an object oriented complete example not relying only on a static main method.