Java GUI Creating Components

Question

I hope it is correct term-wise to say that components in a GUI is like JButton, JPanel, JTextField, all that good stuff.

I want to create a text field that takes in an integer. Then a submit button can be pressed and based on the integer that was inputted, create that many textfields in a popup window or whatever.

I have no clue, could someone get me started in the right direction?

The trouble I'm having is that I have no clue how to create a for loop to create the GUI components. I mean if I have a for loop and do something like:

print("JTextField num1 = new JTextField()");

then in a for loop it will only create 1 text field when I want many. How do I generically create variables of JTextFields?

Thanks for your help...

Answer 1

Use an appropriate LayoutManager (e.g. GridLayout) to create and add your textfields.

for (i = 0; i < numberOfTextFields; i++) {
    JTextField textField = new JTextField();
    container.add(textField);
    /* also store textField somewhere else. */
}

Answer 2

Try something like this:

List<JTextField> nums = new ArrayList<JTextField>();
JTextField tempField;

for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
    tempField = new JTextField();
    jPanel1.add(tempField); // Assuming all JTextFields are on a JPanel
    nums.add(tempField);
}

Don't forget to set a proper layout manager for the container. (jPanel1 in this case)

Answer 3

I would create a List to store the text fields, and then you can get them back by index. Then you can have as many fields as you need.

List fields = new ArrayList();

// Create as many elements as you need
for (int i = 0; i < numberOfElements; i++){
  JTextField field = new JTextField();
  // Add the fields to some panel so they are shown in the screen.  
  // I assume that the component is called parent panel
  parentPanel.add(field);

  // Store the component in the list so you can retrieve it later
  fields.add(field);
}

// ...

// When you want to retrieve a particular one:

JTextField field = (JTextField)fields.get( indexToRetrieve );