Implementing back/forward buttons in Swing

Question

I have a quick question.

I'm getting a little bit of experience with Swing and the easiest way to do this was to draw up a reasonably big GUI.

As part of the GUI, I want to have Forward and Back Buttons. The Approach I'm trying to take is to implement methods that will push the current JPanel to a stack and retrieve the previous value (Be that in a forwards or reverse direction (hence 2 stacks)). I can't get it to work though. Perhaps I'm going about it completely the wrong way or maybe a stack can't be used int the way I'm using it. In either case, it's really bugging me. I imagine there are probably easier ways like a card layout but I think this approach should work and that's what's so annoying.

It may be worth noting that I'm using a JFrame "base class" and changing the central JPanel depending on the screen. The nav bar is constant as a part of the "base class" however

The code of this "base class":

public class Main_Frame extends JFrame{
    static JPanel nav_bar_panel;
    JButton home;
    JButton back;
    JButton forward;
    JPanel currentPanel;

    static Stack<JPanel> previousPanels;
    static Stack<JPanel> forwardPanels;

    public Main_Frame(){
        super("DEMO");
        setSize(800,600);
        setLayout(new BorderLayout());
        setVisible(true);

        add(nav_bar(), BorderLayout.NORTH);
        currentPanel = init_display();
        add(currentPanel, BorderLayout.CENTER);

        previousPanels = new Stack<JPanel>();
        forwardPanels  = new Stack<JPanel>();
    }

    private JPanel nav_bar(){
        ButtonPressHandler handler = new ButtonPressHandler();

        nav_bar_panel = new JPanel(new FlowLayout(FlowLayout.LEFT, 10, 10));
        back = new JButton("Back");
        back.addActionListener(handler);
        home = new JButton("Home");
        home.addActionListener(handler);
        forward = new JButton("Forward");
        forward.addActionListener(handler);

        nav_bar_panel.add(back);
        nav_bar_panel.add(home);
        nav_bar_panel.add(forward);

        return nav_bar_panel;
    }

    private JPanel init_display(){
        Home_Panel home_panel = new Home_Panel();

        return home_panel;
    }

    public void change_display(JPanel myPanel){
        invalidate();
        remove(currentPanel);
        previousPanels.push(currentPanel);
        currentPanel = myPanel;
        add(currentPanel);
        validate();
    }

    public void previous_display(){
        if(!previousPanels.empty()){
            invalidate();
            remove(currentPanel);
            forwardPanels.push(currentPanel);
            currentPanel = previousPanels.pop();
            add(currentPanel);
            validate();
        }
    }

    public void forward_display(){
        if(!forwardPanels.empty()){
            invalidate();
            remove(currentPanel);
            previousPanels.push(currentPanel);
            currentPanel = forwardPanels.pop();
            add(currentPanel);
            validate();
        }
    }

    private class ButtonPressHandler implements ActionListener 
       {
          public void actionPerformed( ActionEvent event )
          {
              if(event.getSource() == back){
                  previous_display();
                  System.out.print("You selected back");
              } else if(event.getSource() == forward){
                  forward_display();
                  System.out.print("You selected forward");
              }
          } // end method actionPerformed
       } // end private inner class TextFieldHandler

}

Answer 1

Here's an example using CardLayout.

import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.CardLayout;
import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.Dimension;
import java.awt.EventQueue;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.util.Random;
import javax.swing.AbstractAction;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JLabel;
import javax.swing.JPanel;

/** @see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5654926 */
public class CardPanel extends JPanel {

    private static final Random random = new Random();
    private static final JPanel cards = new JPanel(new CardLayout());
    private final String name;

    public CardPanel(String name) {
        this.name = name;
        this.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(320, 240));
        this.setBackground(new Color(random.nextInt()));
        this.add(new JLabel(name));
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return name;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable() {

            @Override
            public void run() {
                create();
            }
        });
    }

    private static void create() {
        JFrame f = new JFrame();
        f.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        for (int i = 1; i < 9; i++) {
            CardPanel p = new CardPanel("Panel " + String.valueOf(i));
            cards.add(p, p.toString());
        }
        JPanel control = new JPanel();
        control.add(new JButton(new AbstractAction("\u22b2Prev") {

            @Override
            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
                CardLayout cl = (CardLayout) cards.getLayout();
                cl.previous(cards);
            }
        }));
        control.add(new JButton(new AbstractAction("Next\u22b3") {

            @Override
            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
                CardLayout cl = (CardLayout) cards.getLayout();
                cl.next(cards);
            }
        }));
        f.add(cards, BorderLayout.CENTER);
        f.add(control, BorderLayout.SOUTH);
        f.pack();
        f.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
        f.setVisible(true);
    }
}

Answer 2

the idea of making whatever I get reusable is a good one. Pity Swing didn't have this functionality built in though

Check out Card Layout Actions which is may attempt at making the Card Layout a little easier to use for something like this.

Answer 3

The way I usually do it is as follows:

1. I've got a StepManager class (write it once, use it forever) which handles all logic related to the steps. It got methods like next(), previous(), reset(), isFirst() and isLast().

2. I've then got 'Next' and 'Previous' buttons with appropriate actions (or whatever you choose to use to listen for user interaction).

3. The code related to the 'Next' button calls stepManager.next() to retrieve the index for the next step. Then (when I've got the next step) I simply invoke (another method) showStep(int index) to display the actual step user interface corresponding to the current step index.

Each step is a separate JPanel (Step01, Step02, Step03...).

public void showStep(int index) {
    ContentPanel.removeAll();
    ContentPanel.setLayout(new BorderLayout());

    switch (index) {
        case 0:
            ContentPanel.add(Step01, BorderLayout.CENTER);
            break;

        case 1:
            ContentPanel.add(Step02, BorderLayout.CENTER);
            break;

        case 2:
            ContentPanel.add(Step03, BorderLayout.CENTER);
            break;

        case 3:
            ContentPanel.add(Step04, BorderLayout.CENTER);

        }

    ContentPanel.validate();
    ContentPanel.repaint();
}