Measure how long mouse was held for?

Question

I'm working on a game which involves holding on a button. I want to be able to depending on how long a button was pressed for display an image ie:

x = seconds button was held for

if 3.1 seconds > x > 2.9 seconds

then display image 1

if x < 2.9 or x > 3.1

then display image 2

How would I program this using a mouse listener?

Thank you.

It seems like you would want to hook both `mousePressed()` and `mouseReleased()`. The former would record the last time a mouse key was pressed, possibly on a key-by-key basis, and the latter would compute the time a key was held down as the difference between the current time and the last time it was pressed. — John Bollinger, Jul 22 '15 at 15:23
This could help http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6785385/java-detect-long-mouse-press — Some guy, Jul 22 '15 at 15:26
so i should make an image display based in the event mouseReleased() ? — runit, Jul 22 '15 at 15:28
Not the exact solution shown in that (sigh), you could use the logic behind that. `mousePressed()` and `mouseReleased()`. You could measure the time between the two events. — Some guy, Jul 22 '15 at 15:33
would this part be correct to use: public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent e) { timeClicked = new Date().getTime() - pressedTime.getTime(); if (timeClicked >= 3000) { // DO YOUR ACTION HERE } — runit, Jul 22 '15 at 15:37

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 22 '15 at 15:43

You can use the below code snippet to resolve the problem -

double startTime, endTime, holdTime;
boolean flag = false;

@Override
public final void mousePressed(final MouseEvent e) {
    startTime = System.nanoTime();
    flag = true;
}

@Override
public final void mouseReleased(final MouseEvent e) {
    if(flag) {
        endTime = System.nanoTime();
        flag = false;
    }
    holdTime = (endTime - startTime) / Math.pow(10,9);
}

The holdTime would give you the time in seconds that the mouse was tapped.

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:14

There are different opinions about using System.nanoTime(). Have a look : Is System.nanoTime() completely useless?

To be on a safer side you can write your own class that counts the milliseconds using Runnable interface.

When the mouse is pressed start the Thread containing Runnable interface. And interrupt it when mouse is released.

The Runnable class contains the code that counts the time elapsed.

Consider this snippet:

public class TimeThread implements Runnable{
    int timeElapsed = 0;
    public int getTimeElapsed() {
        return timeElapsed;
    }
   @Override
   public void run(){
        while(true){
             try{
                 Thread.sleep(1);
                 timeElapsed = timeElapsed + 1;
             }catch(InterruptedException ex) {
                 break;
              }
        }     
    }
}

Using the above written TimeThread class to calculate the time elapsed during mouse press and release:

       Thread timeCalculationThread;
       TimeThread timeCalculator;

 public void mousePressed(MouseEvent me) {
    timeCalculator = new TimeThread();
    timeCalculationThread = new Thread(timeCalculator);
    timeCalculationThread.start();

}

@Override
public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent me) {
    timeCalculationThread.interrupt();
    System.out.println("Stopped! time elapsed is "+timeCalculator.getTimeElapsed()+" milliseconds");           
    try {
        timeCalculationThread.join();
        System.out.println("Thread has joined");
    } catch (InterruptedException ex) {
        Logger.getLogger(MouseFrame.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
    }
}

Measure how long mouse was held for?

2 Answers2