I am trying to learn a bit about GUI interfaces with swing and how to construct a GUI program correctly, at least in the most efficient way depending on the project of course.
Here in this example, I try to create a simple program which does the following.
I have a Menu consisting of 2 buttons, each button when is pressed the appropriate ActionListener is triggered and an instance of a new class is getting created.
Each new class ( the name of the 2 of them are: Journal, Seminar ) has its own GUI code consisting of text fields, buttons, and other swing components.
- At first, I had the GUI classes of these 2 inside the Journal's and Seminar's Logic classes. But as I understand this is not a good practice, it seems we need to make the program components not connected so tight together.
- So now I tried to move each GUI method to another class and call them in each of the classes constructors.
NOTE: the final purpose of the program is serializability of objects to file so ignore for now some of the code corresponds to it.
The code isn't functional at the moment.
** QUESTION:**
Is the approach I'm following in the entire program "correct" ? or should I find another way?
What pieces of knowledge should I pursuit so I can understand how to build this kind of apps efficiently?
How I can make the current work?
It's my first post here so I tried my best to give this question in the best way I could, let me know if you need any more info on this. Thanks!*
Any help much appreciated.
Menu Class
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;
import java.io.IOException;
public class Menu {
JFrame menu_frame;
JButton ergasia_periodiko_btn = new JButton();
JButton ergasia_sinedrio_btn = new JButton();
Menu() {
this.menu_frame = new JFrame();
this.menu_frame.setSize(400,100);
this.menu_frame.setTitle("Ereunitikos Katalogos");
this.menu_frame.add(ergasia_periodiko_btn);
this.menu_frame.add(ergasia_sinedrio_btn);
this.menu_frame.setLayout(new FlowLayout());
this.ergasia_periodiko_btn.setText("Periodika");
this.ergasia_sinedrio_btn.setText("Sinedria");
this.ergasia_periodiko_btn.addActionListener(e -> new Journal()); //Action Listener to Joyrnal
this.ergasia_sinedrio_btn.addActionListener(e -> {
try {
new Seminar();
} catch (IOException e1) {
e1.printStackTrace();
}
}); //Action Listener to Seminar
this.menu_frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
this.menu_frame.setVisible(true);
}
public static void main(String[] args)
{ new Menu(); }
}
Journal Class
import java.io.Serializable;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.List;
public class Journal implements Serializable
{
Journal_GUI gui; //**Creating instance of journal gui inside here so i can run the gui code in the constructor**
String column_title;
List writers = new ArrayList(2);
String mag_title;
String numberOfPages;
String released_date;
String volume;
String exact_page;
Journal(){}
public void fillVars()
{
this.column_title = gui.column_title_tf.getText();
this.writers = Collections.singletonList(gui.writers_tf.getText());
this.mag_title = gui.mag_title_tf.getText();
this.numberOfPages = gui.numberOfPages_tf.getText();
this.released_date = gui.released_date_tf.getText();
this.volume = gui.volume_tf.getText();
this.exact_page = gui.exact_page_tf.getText();
}
public void insertP() {
fillVars();
// try {
// My_Serialization.serialization("fileToSavePeriodiko.txt", this.toString());
// }// catch (IOException e) {
// e.printStackTrace();
//}
}
public void searchP_byTitle(){}
public void searchP_byName(){}
@Override
public String toString() {
String value = "\n Periodiko column title : " + column_title + "\n writers : " + writers+ "\n Titlos magazine : " + mag_title
+ "\n Number of Pages : " + numberOfPages + "\n Released Date : " + released_date + "\n Volume : " + volume + "\n Exact Page : " + exact_page +"\n";
return value;
}
}
Journal Gui Class
import javax.swing.*;
public class Journal_GUI extends Journal{
JFrame periodikoFrame;
JTextField column_title_tf;
JTextField writers_tf;
JTextField mag_title_tf;
JTextField numberOfPages_tf;
JTextField released_date_tf;
JTextField volume_tf;
JTextField exact_page_tf;
public Journal_GUI(){
initComponenets();
}
public void initComponenets() {
periodikoFrame = new JFrame("PERIODIKA");
periodikoFrame.setSize(500, 500);
JPanel panel = new JPanel();
BoxLayout boxlayout = new BoxLayout(panel, BoxLayout.Y_AXIS);
panel.setLayout(boxlayout);
column_title_tf = new JTextField("Column Title");
writers_tf = new JTextField("Writers");
mag_title_tf = new JTextField("Magazine's Title");
numberOfPages_tf = new JTextField("Number of Pages");
released_date_tf = new JTextField("Date of Release");
volume_tf = new JTextField("Volume");
exact_page_tf = new JTextField("Exact Page");
JButton search_mag_btn_byName = new JButton("Search By name");
JButton search_mag_btn_byTitle = new JButton("Search By Title");
JButton insert_mag_btn = new JButton("Insert article");
search_mag_btn_byName.addActionListener(e -> searchP_byName());
search_mag_btn_byTitle.addActionListener(e -> searchP_byTitle());
insert_mag_btn.addActionListener(e -> insertP());
panel.add(column_title_tf);
panel.add(writers_tf);
panel.add(mag_title_tf);
panel.add(numberOfPages_tf);
panel.add(released_date_tf);
panel.add(volume_tf);
panel.add(exact_page_tf);
panel.add(search_mag_btn_byName);
panel.add(search_mag_btn_byTitle);
panel.add(insert_mag_btn);
periodikoFrame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
periodikoFrame.add(panel);
periodikoFrame.setVisible(true);
}
}
