Unable to get values from another jFrame

Question

I want to fill values of multiple jTextBox from a jFrame into another, using accessor methods like

String getNameVal()
{
     return jTextBox1.getText();
}

How to call these methods from another jFrame?

Answer 1

Suggestions:

1. It sounds like your GUI code is geared towards making JFrames, and if so, you will want to avoid this. You are painting yourself in a corner by having your class extend JFrame, forcing you to create and display JFrames, when often more flexibility is called for. In fact, I would venture that most of the Swing GUI code that I've created and that I've seen does not extend JFrame, and in fact it is rare that you'll ever want to do this.
2. More commonly your GUI classes will be geared towards creating JPanels, which can then be placed into JFrames or JDialogs, or JTabbedPanes, or swapped via CardLayouts, wherever needed. This will greatly increase the flexibility of your GUI coding.
3. This question has direct bearing on your problem. I will guess that your main problem isn't how to give classes getter methods, and how to have other classes call the getter methods. More often then not, when faced with the issue of extracting information from one GUI view to another, the issue is one of when to extract the information. If you displayed your second window as a non-modal JFrame, and then had the calling class immediately extract the data from that second JFrame, you'd get nonsense data, because you'd be extracting data before the user would have time to interact with the 2nd window and enter data.
4. One possible solution to this when using non-modal windows to get information from the user is to use a WindowListener so you can be notified when the user has completed his dealing with the second window, and so now data can be safely extracted.
5. Often better is for the 2nd window not be non-modal, as JFrames are, but instead to be a modal window such as a modal JDialog. When the calling code displays a modal dialog, all code flow in the calling code stops until the dialog is no longer visible. In this situation, no WindowListener is needed since you will know exactly when the dialog has been dealt with -- on the code line immediately after you set it visible -- and so can extract your data from it with ease.
6. A nice variant on this has already been mentioned in by Andrew Thompson in comments -- use a JOptionPane. Don't poo-poo this option since JOptionPanes are powerful tools, likely much more powerful than you realize as they can hold fully formed complex JPanel views, and behave just as described above, as modal dialogs.

---

If you need more specific help, then please don't hesitate to comment to this answer. Also if so, then consider creating and posting a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable Example Program where you condense your code into the smallest bit that still compiles and runs, has no outside dependencies (such as need to link to a database or images), has no extra code that's not relevant to your problem, but still demonstrates your problem.

---

Edit
For my mcve code examples of the above suggestions, please my answers to the following StackOverflow Questions:

• Using a modal JDialog to extract information
• Using a JOptonPane to extract information

Answer 2

I assume the textfields are present in frame1 and you want to access them in frame2. The following can be a way to achieve this:

1. First create getters for all JTextFields that you have in your frame1.
        Alternatively you can have them in a panel and call getComponents() method.
   
2. Create a private variable of JFrame type in your frame2.
   
3. Modify the constructor of frame2 to receive the frame1 object and assign it to the private variable of JFrame type.
   
4. Now you can create a close() method in frame2 which disposes the frame2 and sets frame1 to visible.
   
   

But in my opinion you should create a class which handles the data in these textfields. Initialize the class object in any button click of frame1 and check for any inconsistency in the input. I can guess there is something wrong with your design.