Insert JFrame into a Tab in Swing

Question

I Have an already given JFrame frame, that I want to show it (insert it) into a tab of JTabbedPane, but that was not possible explicitely like that:

frame = new JFrame();
frame.setBounds(100, 100, 450, 300);
frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);

mainTabs.addTab("Editor", null, frame, null);

And the error was:

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: adding a window to a container

I tried some solutions like to insert the frame into a JPanel but also in vain. I have the idea to convert it into an InternalJFrame but I don't have any idea about that.

Is that any solution to insert that frame?

UPDATE:

I tried that soluion:

 mainTabs.addTab("Editor", null, frame.getContentPane(), null);

But i lost the JMenuBar that I added.

Answer 1

You can't add JFrame(or another top-level component) to another component/container, but you can use getContentPane() method of frame, to get main panel of your frame and add that to JTabbedPane tab. Like next:

JTabbedPane tabs = new JTabbedPane();
JFrame frame = new JFrame();
frame.add(new JButton("button"));
tabs.addTab("1", frame.getContentPane());

Also you can change JFrame to JPanel and use that.

Read about JInternalFrame, top-level containers.

EDIT: getContentPane() doesn't return any decorations or JMenuBar, this components you need to add manually, like in next example with menu:

JTabbedPane tabs = new JTabbedPane();

JFrame frame = new JFrame();
JMenuBar bar = new JMenuBar();
bar.add(new JMenu("menu"));
frame.setJMenuBar(bar);
frame.add(new JButton("button"));

JPanel tab1 = new JPanel(new BorderLayout());
tab1.add(frame.getJMenuBar(),BorderLayout.NORTH);
tab1.add(frame.getContentPane());
tabs.addTab("1", tab1);