How do I refresh the panel with a two dimensional button array?

Question

I'm making a chess game in Java. And because I'm a beginner at Swing, I ran into a problem right away. I made a two dimensional array of buttons for the chessboard tiles. The problem is when my first button is clicked I do not know how to refresh that button or the panel it is in.

Here is the code.

public class Table extends JFrame implements ActionListener{

    public JButton[][]tile = new JButton[8][8];
    JPanel gamePAN = new JPanel();
    int size=8;
    Tile[][] tileList = new Tile[8][8];

    private final Color lightTileColor = Color.decode("#FFFACD");
    private final Color darkTileColor = Color.decode("#593E1A");

    public Table() {

        this.setResizable(true);
        this.setVisible(true);
        this.setTitle("Chess");
        initCompoments();

        Toolkit tk = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit();

        int xsize = (int) tk.getScreenSize().getWidth();
        int ysize = (int) tk.getScreenSize().getHeight();

        this.setSize(xsize, ysize);

private void initCompoments() {

        setDefaultCloseOperation(javax.swing.WindowConstants.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        getContentPane().setLayout(null);

        gamePAN.setLayout(new java.awt.GridLayout(8, 8, 0, 0));
        getContentPane().add(gamePAN);
        gamePAN.setBounds(550, 100, 800, 800);

        pack();
    }

    private void initialize() {
        //gamePAN = new JPanel();
        //gamePAN.setLayout(new GridLayout(size,size));
        for(int i=0;i<size;i++) {
            for(int j=0; j<size;j++) {
                if(i%2==0) {
                    if(j%2==0) {
                        tile[i][j] = new JButton();       
                                tile[i[j].setBackground(lightTileColor)              
                                tile[i[j].addActionListener(this);
                        tile[i][j].setSize(10,10);
                        gamePAN.add(tile[i][j]);
                    }else {
                        tile[i][j] = new JButton();
                        tile[i[j].setBackground(darkTileColor);
                        tile[i[j].addActionListener(this);
                        tile[i][j].setSize(10,10);
                        gamePAN.add(tile[i][j]);
                    }
            }else {
                if(j%2==0) {
                    tile[i][j] = new JButton();
                    tile[i[j].setBackground(darkTileColor);
                    tile[i][j].addActionListener(this);
                    tile[i][j].setSize(10,10);
                    gamePAN.add(tile[i][j]);
                }else {
                    tile[i][j] = new JButton(); 
                                 tile[i[j].setBackground(lightTileColor);
                                    tile[i][j].addActionListener(this);
                    tile[i][j].setSize(10,10);
                    gamePAN.add(tile[i][j]);
            }
        }
    }
    }

@Override
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ae) {

            for(int r=0;r<size;r++) {
                for(int c=0;c<size;c++) {
                    if(ae.getSource()==tile[r][c]) {
        if(tileList[r[c].getPiece()!=null) {
        tileList[r][c].getPiece().kretanje(tile, tileList);
                }
        }

}
}

[Here](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21142686/making-a-robust-resizable-swing-chess-gui) is an example, how to make a chessboard using Swing. — Sergiy Medvynskyy, Sep 12 '19 at 10:33
In addition to the example linked by @SergiyMedvynskyy, you'd need to hold an instance of a model for the game state (say in a `ChessGameModel` object). When either player moves, change the game state to reflect the move and update the view (as seen at the link). — Andrew Thompson, Sep 12 '19 at 10:37

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 12 '19 at 13:51

The problem is when my first button is clicked I do not know how to refresh that button or the panel it is in

There is no need for all the looping code in the ActionListener.

The ActionEvent will contain the reference to the button that was clicked.

So in the ActionListener you add to the button your basic code would be:

JButton button = (JButton)ae.getSource();
button.setIcon(...); // do whatever you want with the button

How do I refresh the panel with a two dimensional button array?

1 Answers1