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NetBeans 6.0 and Java Desktop GUI:

A Practice #1
Contents:

1. Creating a Project
2. Building the Front End
3. Create a JFrame container
4. Adding Components: Making the Front End
5. Renaming the Components
6. Adding Functionality
7. Making the Exit Button Work
8. Making the Clear Button Work
9. Making the Add Button Work
10. Lets get started!
11. Running the Program
12. How Event Handling Works

The machine specifications used in this task are:

Intel Pentium Core 2 Duo, 2.2 GHz,

Windows XP Pro SP2 + periodical patches + periodical updates
2 GB DDR2 RAM
160 GB SATA HDD
17” SyncMaster 713N monitor
NetBeans IDE 6.x.x

In this hands-on tutorial, we would like to create a java desktop application that looks something like the following.
Creating a Project

1. The first step is to create an IDE project for the application that we are going to develop. We will name our project NumberAddition.
2. Choose File > New Project. Alternatively, you can click the New Project icon in the IDE toolbar.
3. In the Categories pane, select the Java node. In the Projects pane, choose Java Application. Click Next.

4. Type NumberAddition in the Project Name field and specify a path e.g. in your home directory as the project location.
5. Ensure that the Set as Main Project checkbox is selected. Deselect the Create Main Class checkbox if it is selected.
6. Click Finish.
Building the Front End

To proceed with building our interface, we need to create aJava container within which we will place the other required GUI components. In
this step we'll create a container using the JFrame component. We will place the container in a new package, which will appear within the
Source Packages node.

Create a JFrame container

1. In the Projects window, right-click the NumberAddition node and choose New > JFrame Form.
2. Enter NumberAdditionUI as the class name.
3. Enter my.numberaddition as the package.
4. Click Finish.
The IDE creates the NumberAdditionUI form and the NumberAdditionUI class within the NumberAddition application, and opens the
NumberAdditionUI form in the GUI Builder. The my.NumberAddition package replaces the default package.

Adding Components: Making the Front End

Next we will use the Palette to populate our application's front end with a JPanel. If you do not see the Palette window in the upper right corner
of the IDE, choose Windows > Palette.
Start by selecting a JPanel from the Palette and drop it onto the JFrame.

While the JPanel is highlighted, go to the Properties window and click the ellipsis (...) button next to Border to choose a border style.
In the Border dialog, select TitledBorder from the list, and type in Number Addition in the Title field. Click OK to save the changes and exit the
dialog.
You should now see an empty titled JFrame that says Number Addition like in the screenshot. Look at the screenshot and add three JLabels,
three JTextFields and three JButtons as you see above.
Then we will add three JLabels.
Followed by adding three JTextFields.

And three JButtons.

Once you are done dragging and positioning the aforementioned components, the JFrame should look something like the previous screenshot.

Renaming the Components

In this step we are going to rename the display text of the components that were just added to the JFrame.

1. Double-click jLabel1 and change the text property to First Number or select the label and change the text value to First Number: in the
Properties page as shown below.

2. Double-click jLabel2 and change the text to Second Number.

3. Double-click jLabel3 and change the text to Result. Rearrange the label and text field control by click, hold and drag.

4. Double-click jTextField1 and remove the sample text in the text field or select the Text Field control and delete the text value as shown
below in the Properties page. You may have to resize the jTextField1 to its original size. Repeat this step for jTextField2 and jTextField3.

5. Double-click jButton1 and rename it Clear or select the button and through the Properties page, change the default value of text to Clear.
6. Repeat for jButton2 and rename it Add.

7. Repeat for jButton3 and rename it Exit.

Your Finished GUI should now look like the following screenshot.

Adding Functionality

In this exercise we are going to give functionality to the Add, Clear, and Exit buttons. The jTextField1 and jTextField2 boxes will be used for user
input and jTextField3 for program output - what we are creating is a very simple calculator. Let's begin.

Making the Exit Button Work

In order to give function to the buttons, we have to assign anevent handler to each to respond to events. In our case we want to know when
the button is pressed, either by mouse click or via keyboard. So we will use ActionListener responding to ActionEvent.
1. Right click the Exit button. From the pop-up menu choose Events > Action > ActionPerformed. Note that the menu contains many more
events you can respond to! When you select the actionPerformed event, the IDE will automatically add an ActionListener to the Exit button
and generate a handler method for handling the listener's actionPerformed method.

2. The IDE will open up the Source Code window and scroll to where you implement the action you want the button to do when the button is
pressed (either by mouse click or via keyboard). Your Source Code window should contain the following lines.

private void ExitActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) {

// TODO add your handling code here:
}
3. We are now going to add code for what we want the Exit Button to do. You will have to type System.exit(0); to the above code, replacing the
TODO line. Your finished Exit button code should look like this:

private void jButton3ActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) {

System.exit(0);
}

You can switch back to the design mode by clicking the Design tab.

Making the Clear Button Work

1. Click the Design tab at the top of your work area to go back to the Form Design.
2. Right click the Clear button (jButton1). From the pop-up menu select Events > Action > actionPerformed.

3. We are going to have the Clear button erase all text from the jTextFields. To do this, you will add some code like above. Your finished
source code should look like this:
 private void jButton1ActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt){
jTextField1.setText("");
jTextField2.setText("");
jTextField3.setText("");
}

The above code changes the text in all three of our JTextFields to nothing, in essence it is overwriting the existing Text with a blank.

Making the Add Button Work

The Add button will perform three actions.

1. It is going to accept user input from jTextField1 and jTextField2 and convert the input from a type String to a float.
2. It will then perform addition of the two numbers and finally,
3. It will convert the sum to a type String and place it in jTextField3.

Lets get started!

1. Click the Design tab at the top of your work area to go back to the Form Design.
2. Right-click the Add button (jButton3). From the pop-up menu, select Events > Action > actionPerformed.

3. We are going to add some code to have our Add button work. The finished source code shall look like this:

private void jButton2ActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt){

// First we define float variables.
 float num1, num2, result;
// We have to parse the text to a type float.
num1 = Float.parseFloat(jTextField1.getText());
num2 = Float.parseFloat(jTextField2.getText());
// Now we can perform the addition.
result = num1+num2;
// We will now pass the value of result to jTextField3.
// At the same time, we are going to
// change the value of result from a float to a string.
jTextField3.setText(String.valueOf(result));
}

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Our program is now complete we can now build and run it to see it in action.

Running the Program

The final step is to build and run the program.

1. Choose Build > Build Main Project.

2. When the Build output is finished, choose Run > Run Main Project.

3. If you get a window informing you that Project NumberAddition does not have a main class set, then you should select
my.NumberAddition.NumberAdditionUI as the main class in the same window and click the OK button.
4. Your created program is now running. Test your GUI by typing numbers in the First Number and Second Number fields and click the Add
button. The Click the Clear button and finally the Exit button.
In this tutorial you learned how you hook up functionality to GUI components with the NetBeans GUI Builder.

How Event Handling Works

This tutorial showed how to respond to s simple button event. There are many more events you can have your application respond to. The IDE
can help you find the list of available events your GUI components can handle:

1. Go back to the file NumberAdditionUI.java in the Editor. Click the Design tab to see the GUI's layout in the GUI Builder.
2. Right-click any GUI component, and select Events from the pop-up menu. For now, just browse the menu to see what's there, you don't
need to select anything.

3. Alternatively, you can select Properties from the Window menu. In the Properties window, click the Events tab. In the Events tab, you can
view and edit events handlers associated with the currently active GUI component.
 4. You can have your application respond to key presses, single, double and triple mouse clicks, mouse motion, window size and focus
changes. You can generate event handlers for all of them from the Events menu. The most common event you will use is an Action
event. (Learnbest practices for Event handling from Sun'sJava Events Tutorial.)
How does event handling work? Every time you select an event from the Event menu, the IDE automatically creates a so-called event listener
for you, and hooks it up to your component. Go through the following steps to see how event handling works.
1. Go back to the file NumberAdditionUI.java in the Editor. Click the Source tab to see the GUI's source.
2. Scroll down and note the methods jButton1ActionPerformed(), jButton2ActionPerformed(), and jButton3ActionPerformed() that you just
implemented. These methods are called event handlers.
3. Now scroll to a method called initComponents(). If you do not see this method, look for a line that says Generated Code; click the + sign
next to it to expand the collapsed initComponents() method.
4. First, note the blue block around the initComponents() method. This code was auto-generated by the IDE and you cannot edit it.
 5. Now, browse through the initComponents() method. Among other things, it contains the code that initializes and places your GUI
components on the form. This code is generated and updated automatically while you place and edit components in the Design view.
6. In initComponents(), scroll down to where it says:

This is the spot where an event listener object is added to the GUI component; in this case, you register an ActionListener to the Exit. The
ActionListener interface has an actionPerformed method taking ActionEvent object which is implemented simply by calling your
ExitActionPerformed event handler. The button is now listening to action events. Every time it is pressed an ActionEvent is generated and
passed to the listener's actionPerformed method which in turn executes code that you provided in the event handler for this event.
Generally speaking, to be able to respond, each interactive GUI component needs to register to an event listener and needs to implement an
event handler. As you can see, NetBeans IDE handles hooking up the event listener for you, so you can concentrate on implementing the
actual business logic that should be triggered by the event.
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