Java Menubar Action to a Class

Question

I have a java menubar in my program that just has 1 option with 2 sub-options, e.g. File -> Save, Close. But instead of Save and Close, my options are Server and Client. So for the action event for the 1st option I have this java action listener:

public class serverAction extends AbstractAction
    {
        public serverAction()
        {
            super();
        }
        public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
        {
            JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "Test");
        }

    }

So this works when I click on File->Server, it pops up a window that says Test. Now I have a server class (That I have tested separately and know it works) that looks like this:

public class SocketServer {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        ...
    }   
    private static class ClientListenThread extends Thread {        
        public ClientListenThread(Socket socket, int ClientNumber){
            ...
        }       
        public void run() {
            ...
        }
    }

    private static class ServerSendThread extends Thread {      
        public ServerSendThread(Socket socket) {
            ...
        }       
        public void run() {
            ...
        }
    }
}

Now I need to call this SocketServer class when I click on the server option of my main program so that it can start the server code and wait and listen for any client connections. My question is, how do I start the entire SocketServer class code from the serverAction class?

Answer 1

Your nested-classes are private that means that are only visible in ServerSocket class. So you can provide a helper method with more visibility or change class declaration signature with more visibility.

Example with helper method:

public class SocketServer {
.
.
 //nested classes declaration    
 public static void startServer(){
   //code to start threads new SomeThread().start();
 }    
}

And in your action

public class ServerAction extends AbstractAction{
        @Override
        public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e){
            SocketServer.startServer();
            JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "Test"); 
        }
}

It would be great if you can notify when a client is connected and so on, I'd recommend you to take a look to SwingWorker that provide helpful tool to handle notification between a background thread and the gui thread.

Read more: Worker threads and SwingWorker

Note : Would be great if you implements Runnable rather to extend Thread, you are not adding any special functionality to thread there is no reason, more details here --> "implements Runnable" vs. "extends Thread".