Introduction to Java GUI Programming with Swing

Rolandmack
2 min readMay 24, 2023

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Java Swing is a powerful toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs) in Java. It provides a wide range of components, such as buttons, text fields, and menus, that can be used to create attractive and functional GUIs. Swing is platform-independent, which means that your GUIs will look the same on any platform, including Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

In this blog post, we will give you a brief introduction to Java Swing. We will cover the following topics:

  • What is Java Swing?
  • How to install Java Swing
  • Creating a simple Swing GUI
  • Using Swing components
  • Layout managers
  • Event handling

What is Java Swing?

Java Swing is a set of graphical user interface (GUI) components that are part of the Java platform. Swing components are built on top of the Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT), but they provide a number of advantages over AWT components. For example, Swing components are more lightweight and efficient, and they are platform-independent.

How to install Java Swing

Java Swing is included in the Java Development Kit (JDK). If you already have the JDK installed, you can skip this section.

To install the JDK, go to the Oracle website and download the latest version of the JDK for your operating system. Once the JDK is installed, you can start creating Swing GUIs.

Creating a simple Swing GUI

To create a simple Swing GUI, you will need to create a new Java project and add a Swing library to the project. Once you have added the Swing library, you can start creating Swing components.

The following code shows how to create a simple Swing GUI with a button and a text field:

Code snippet

import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.EventQueue;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JLabel;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.JTextField;
public class HelloWorld { public static void main(String[] args) {
EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
@Override
public void run() {
JFrame frame = new JFrame("Hello, World!");
frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
JPanel panel = new JPanel();
JLabel label = new JLabel("Enter your name:");
JTextField textField = new JTextField();
JButton button = new JButton("Say Hello!");
button.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
@Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
System.out.println("Hello, " + textField.getText() + "!");
}
});
panel.add(label);
panel.add(textField);
panel.add(button);
frame.add(panel);
frame.pack();
frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
frame.setVisible(true);
}
});
}
}

This code will create a simple GUI with a button and a text field. When the user clicks the button, the program will print “Hello, “ + textField.getText() + “!” to the console.

Using Swing components

Swing provides a wide range of components that can be used to create GUIs. Some of the most commonly used components include:

  • Buttons
  • Text fields
  • Labels
  • Menus
  • Panels
  • Layout managers

Layout managers

Layout managers are used to control the layout of components in a GUI. Swing provides a number of different layout managers, including:

  • BorderLayout
  • FlowLayout
  • GridLayout
  • GridBagLayout

Event handling

Swing components can respond to events, such as mouse clicks and key presses. To handle events, you need to add event listeners to the components. Event listeners are objects that implement the ActionListener, KeyListener, or other event listener interfaces. Check here for Java Course in Gurgaon

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