How do I make a JLabel always stay above a JButton?

Question

So I have a gui where the layout is set to Null, and I put JLabels ontop of JButtons since the JButtons have icons and adding text to the button makes the button look distorted, so instead I am using JLabels ontop of the JButtons. Every time the mouse goes over the JButton when I test it, the JLabel disappears. How can I fix that so JLabels always appear above JButtons.

Edit: it distorts the button so the icon is taking up most the space and the button label is cut off by the opposite edge of the button.

Answer 1

If you're using a JFrame, as I assume you must be, you could add the labels to a JLayered pane that sits on top of the content pane.

Answer 2

There is almost no cases when you will need to use null layout. You just need to do a little practice with the LayoutManagers

You can do the thing you wish to do with a JLayeredPane. Like this:

import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JComponent;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JLabel;
import javax.swing.JLayeredPane;

public class Test {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        JFrame frame = new JFrame();

        frame.add(jLabelOnJButton());

        frame.setSize(300, 300);
        frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        frame.setVisible(true);
    }

    private static JComponent jLabelOnJButton(){
        JLayeredPane layers = new JLayeredPane();

        JLabel label = new JLabel("label");
        JButton button = new JButton("button");

        label.setBounds(40, 20, 100, 50);
        button.setBounds(20, 20, 150, 75);

        layers.add(label, new Integer(2));
        layers.add(button, new Integer(1));

        return layers;
    }
}

This is not a good solution I think. Only do it if you have no better solution.