Windowbuilder shortcut key

Question

How can I create a button with a shortcut key?

the result would display an underlined letter on the button label or the control. The user can then press [Alt]+key to run the default actionEvent of the control.

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

" I found something related to an actionMap. I looked complicated. "

It's not complicated at all. What you want to do is use an Action (which is similar to an ActionListener with a callback), which can be allocated to different components. You can use the same Action for a JPanel and the JButton.

Suppose you have this Action

Action printHelloAction = new AbstractAction("Print") {
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
        System.out.println("Hello");
    }
};

What you want to do is add that to the ActionMap, InputMap of the JPanel, and at the same time just add that Action to the JButton

JPanel panel = new JPanel();
InputMap im = panel.getInputMap(JComponent.WHEN_IN_FOCUSED_WINDOW);
im.put(KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(KeyEvent.VK_P, ActionEvent.CTRL_MASK), "printAction");
ActionMap am = panel.getActionMap();
am.put("printAction", printHelloAction);    // add to JPanel ActionMap

JButton button = new JButton(printHelloAction); // add to JButton
button.setText("Print Hello");

You can see I used the same Action for the JPanel key bind and also the JButton.

See more How to use Action and How to Use Key Bindings

---

Here's an example from the code above. Use Ctrl + P

import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.KeyEvent;
import javax.swing.AbstractAction;
import javax.swing.Action;
import javax.swing.ActionMap;
import javax.swing.InputMap;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JComponent;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.KeyStroke;
import javax.swing.SwingUtilities;

public class KeyBindActionDemo {

    public KeyBindActionDemo() {
        Action printHelloAction = new AbstractAction("Print") {
            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
                System.out.println("Hello");
            }
        };
        JPanel panel = new JPanel();
        InputMap im = panel.getInputMap(JComponent.WHEN_IN_FOCUSED_WINDOW);
        im.put(KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(KeyEvent.VK_P, ActionEvent.CTRL_MASK), "printAction");
        ActionMap am = panel.getActionMap();
        am.put("printAction", printHelloAction);

        JButton button = new JButton(printHelloAction);
        button.setText("Print Hello");

        panel.add(button);

        JFrame frame = new JFrame();
        frame.add(panel);
        frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        frame.pack();
        frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
        frame.setVisible(true);
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
            public void run() {
                new KeyBindActionDemo();
            }
        });
    }
}