Working With Color Chooser in Swing

Abhishek Dubey
13y
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Introduction

In this article we describe how we can work with the color chooser. The color chooser dialog box is a very general thing for GUI applications. Java provides a JColorChooser class with the Swing package. Use the JColorChooser class to enable users to choose from a palette of colors. A color chooser is a component that you can place anywhere within your GUI program. The JColorChooser API also makes it easy to bring up a dialog (modal or not) that contains a color chooser.

For adding a color chooser to your application you have to follow some steps.

Step 1 : Import the necessary package.

import javax.swing.JDialog;

import javax.swing.JFrame;

import javax.swing.JPanel;

import javax.swing.JButton;

import javax.swing.JTextArea;

import java.awt.EventQueue;

import java.awt.BorderLayout;

import java.awt.Color;

import java.awt.GridLayout;

import java.awt.event.ActionListener;

import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;

import javax.swing.JColorChooser;

Step 2 : Create a class and define the component variables.

public class ColorChooserDemo

{

JFrame myFrame;

JTextArea ta;

JPanel pnl;

Step 3 : Create a GUI within the constructor.

public ColorChooserDemo()

{

myFrame = new JFrame();

// for handle the frame close operation

myFrame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);

//set the title of frame

myFrame.setTitle("Color choosher Dialog box Example");

//Set the size

myFrame.setSize(500,300);

myFrame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);

myFrame.setLayout(new BorderLayout());

// creating TextArea

ta = new JTextArea("Your TextArea:");

ta.setVisible(true);

//Add text Area in frame

myFrame.add(ta, BorderLayout.NORTH);

// creating panel

pnl = new JPanel();

//pass the object of grid layout

pnl.setLayout(new GridLayout(1,2));

myFrame.add(pnl,BorderLayout.SOUTH);

//creating A button

JButton showButton = new JButton("Show ColorChooser box");

showButton.setActionCommand("Show ColorChooser box");

//Performing event handling

Step 4: Perform event handling.

showButton.addActionListener(new ActionListener()

{

public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event)

{

Color selectedColor = JColorChooser.showDialog(myFrame, "Pick a Color", Color.GREEN);

if (selectedColor != null)

{

ta.append("\nThe selected color is make up of Red: "+ selectedColor.getRed() + " Blue: " + selectedColor.getBlue()+ " Green: " + selectedColor.getGreen());

}

});

pnl.add(showButton);

JButton createButton = new JButton("Create Color");

createButton.setActionCommand("Create Color");

createButton.addActionListener(new ActionListener()

{

@Override

public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event)

{

final JColorChooser colorChooser = new JColorChooser();

JDialog dialog = JColorChooser.createDialog(myFrame, "Chane TextArea color", false, colorChooser, new ActionListener()

{

@Override

public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event)

{

ta.append("\n Now my color is changed to "+ colorChooser.getColor());

ta.setBackground(colorChooser.getColor());

}

, new ActionListener()

{

@Override

public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event)

{

ta.append("\nYou clicked on cancel..");

}

});

dialog.setVisible(true);

}

});

pnl.add(createButton);

myFrame.setVisible(true);

}

Step 5: All the GUI-related components are in the constructor.

Complete code

import javax.swing.JDialog;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JTextArea;
import java.awt.EventQueue;
import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.GridLayout;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import javax.swing.JColorChooser;
public class ColorChooserDemo
{
JFrame myFrame;
JTextArea ta;
JPanel pnl;
public ColorChooserDemo()
{
myFrame = new JFrame();
myFrame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
myFrame.setTitle("Dialog Box Example");
myFrame.setSize(500,300);
myFrame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
myFrame.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
ta = new JTextArea("File ta:");
ta.setVisible(true);
myFrame.add(ta, BorderLayout.NORTH);
pnl = new JPanel();
pnl.setLayout(new GridLayout(1,2));
myFrame.add(pnl,BorderLayout.SOUTH);
JButton showButton = new JButton("Show ColorChooser box");
showButton.setActionCommand("Show ColorChooser box");
showButton.addActionListener(new ActionListener()
{
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event)
{
Color selectedColor = JColorChooser.showDialog(myFrame, "Pick a Color", Color.GREEN);
if (selectedColor != null)
{
ta.append("\nThe selected color is make up of Red: "+ selectedColor.getRed() + " Blue: " + selectedColor.getBlue()+ " Green: " + selectedColor.getGreen());
}
}
});
pnl.add(showButton);
JButton createButton = new JButton("Create Color");
createButton.setActionCommand("Create Color");
createButton.addActionListener(new ActionListener()
{
@Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event)
{
final JColorChooser colorChooser = new JColorChooser();
JDialog dialog = JColorChooser.createDialog(myFrame, "Chane TextArea color", false, colorChooser,
new ActionListener()
{
@Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event)
{
ta.append("\n Now my color is changed to "+ colorChooser.getColor());
ta.setBackground(colorChooser.getColor());
}
}
, new ActionListener()
{
@Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event)
{
ta.append("\nYou clicked on cancel..");
}