How should a JButton keep track of its position in a GridLayout?

Question

I have a class called cell, which extends JButton. Then I have 16 Jbuttons in a gridlayout(4,4,3,3). Is it possible to have every cell keep track of its position in the gridlayout(I will need to know if one clicked JButton is near to another specific JButton).

Answer 1

You could simply create a class extending JButton and adding two fields for the position in the grid. Create a new constructor (or setters) that assign values to theses fields, and two simple getters that will return them.

Example :

class MyJButton extends JButton {

    private int gridx;
    private int gridy;

    public MyJButton(String label, int gridx, int gridy) {
        super(label);
        this.gridx = gridx;
        this.gridy = gridy;
    }

    public int getGridx() {
        return gridx;
    }

    public int getGridy() {
        return gridy;
    }
}

You can assign these gridx,gridy values when you build the GUI. For example, the following creates 16 buttons, labelled with their position in the grid :

for (int i = 0; i < 4; i++) {
    for (int j = 0; j < 4; j++) {
        MyJButton btn = new MyJButton(i + "," + j, i, j);
        //Configure your button here...
        panel.add(btn);
    }
}

Answer 2

I stored them in a List, but the problem, (this buttons and gridlaoyout is a slide puzzle game) i cant move the button to left bottom after it being moved for the first time, so i thougt i would try another way where every button keep track of its position

• use putClientProperty

• change Icon for JButton from added ActionListener

• I'd be use JToggleButton with ItemListener for puzzle game