SwingUtilities.invokeLater ... is there an invokeNow?

Question

I had a problem earlier where I was trying to add objects to my canvas but the SwingUtilities.invokeLater hadn't really done its job yet. I really need to be able to add things reliably to this JPanel but I keep running into this same error. Is there a better alternative to the below code?

private void startNewGame() {
    SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
        public void run() {
            gameFrame = new InvadersGameFrame();
        }
    });
}

Answer 1

See SwingUtilities.invokeAndWait(Runnable) which:

Causes doRun.run() to be executed synchronously on the AWT event dispatching thread. This call blocks until all pending AWT events have been processed and (then) doRun.run() returns. This method should be used when an application thread needs to update the GUI.