make JDialog disappear after a few seconds

Question

I have a JDialog class:

public class Test extends JDialog {
private JPanel panel = new JPanel ( new BorderLayout() );
 public Test () {
   super(frame,"Evidenziatore");
   setDefaultCloseOperation(HIDE_ON_CLOSE);
   setVisible(true);
   add( panel, BorderLayout.CENTER );
 }
}

What I'd like to do is to make JDIalog disappear after user has exited from that JDialog or from the JPanel for a few seconds, e.g. using mouseEntered or mouseExited events or after user has clicked somewhere else. I mean something like chrome or firefox search window, avaible using ctrl-f.

How can I do that?

Thanks

Answer 1

You could use a Timer which is triggered on a mouseEntered or mouseExited. You could also use a FocusListener to cater for what happens when the Dialog looses focus (timer starts) or when it gains it (timer stops, no timer related event is to be fired).

Answer 2

Start with taking a look at How to write a mouse listener.

This is, actually, a complex problem.

Basically, when you add a mouse listener to a component that is higher in the visual hierarchy, it's child components (that that higher component covers) will no longer receive mouse events...

So a basic example might look something like this...

import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.EventQueue;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import java.awt.event.MouseAdapter;
import java.awt.event.MouseEvent;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JLabel;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.Timer;
import javax.swing.UIManager;
import javax.swing.UnsupportedLookAndFeelException;

public class AutoHide {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        new AutoHide();
    }

    private Timer autoHideTimer;

    public AutoHide() {
        EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
            @Override
            public void run() {
                try {
                    UIManager.setLookAndFeel(UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName());
                } catch (ClassNotFoundException | InstantiationException | IllegalAccessException | UnsupportedLookAndFeelException ex) {
                }

                final JFrame frame = new JFrame("Testing");
                frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
                frame.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
                frame.add(new JLabel("Auto Hide"));
                frame.pack();
                frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
                frame.setVisible(true);

                autoHideTimer = new Timer(1000, new ActionListener() {
                    @Override
                    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
                        frame.dispose();
                    }
                });
                autoHideTimer.setRepeats(false);

                frame.addMouseListener(new MouseAdapter() {
                    @Override
                    public void mouseExited(MouseEvent e) {
                        System.out.println("Restart...");
                        autoHideTimer.restart();
                    }

                    @Override
                    public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent e) {
                        System.out.println("Stop");
                        autoHideTimer.stop();
                    }
                });

            }
        });
    }

}

Now this will work, because JLabel doesn't have a MouseListener attached to it, but if you were to, say, add JPanel to the content pane and add a MouseListener to that, it will block the mouse events going to the frame...

Answer 3

Use a Panel with a JTextField! You should write your own TextField and Overwrite the focusLost(FocusEvent e) method. That works like that:

public class MyTextField extends JTextField implements FocusListener

Eclipse (or NetBeans) should warn you that you have to override some methods, do that!

Use a clock or somthing to make that it disapeers after a few secounds. For example:

Thread.sleep(5000);

Now your program should sleep for 5 secounds. Keep in mind that you should use a other thread because if you do not use one the gui will freeze as long as the timer runs!