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L2FProd: Choose Directories with JDirectoryChooser

At 11:24 PM on May 30, 2005, R.J. Lorimer wrote:

Hey everybody - another tip about L2FProd Swing components today. Today I want to talk about the com.l2fprod.common.swing.JDirectoryChooser control. For those of you who have used the standard Swing javax.swing.JFileChooser , you're in luck - the JDirectoryChooser widget has, for the most part, the same functional API. Functionally, this is because the JDirectoryChooser extends from the JFileChooser .

For those of you who haven't used the file chooser, or simply need a refresher course, here is a quick run through on using the directory chooser widget that ships with L2FProd.

The first step is to create a control to trigger the directory chooser (assuming you want it to be used as a dialog). It is quite simple to do so - here is an example:

JButton button = new JButton("Show Directory Chooser");
button.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
	public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
		JDirectoryChooser chooser = new JDirectoryChooser();
		int choice = chooser.showOpenDialog(frame);
		if(choice == JDirectoryChooser.CANCEL_OPTION) {
			System.out.println("User Canceled");					
		}
		else {
			System.out.println("Dialog Selection: " + chooser.getSelectedFile().getAbsolutePath());
		}
	}	
});

You would then put that button on a UI, or on some panel so that the user could press it to enable the directory chooser dialog. Alternatively, the JDirectoryChooser can be used in an existing component -potentially for some tool that needs a directory navigator (such as a file explorer application). In that case you would want to respond (most likely) whenever the selection in the chooser changed - in that case you can associate a property change listener:

JDirectoryChooser inlineChooser = new JDirectoryChooser();
inlineChooser.addPropertyChangeListener(new PropertyChangeListener() {
	public void propertyChange(PropertyChangeEvent evt) {
		String prop = evt.getPropertyName();
		// If the directory changed, don't show an image.
		if(JFileChooser.SELECTED_FILE_CHANGED_PROPERTY.equals(prop)) {
			File file = (File) evt.getNewValue();
			System.out.println("Inline Selection: " + file.getAbsolutePath());
		}
 
	};
});

You would then want to add that inlineChooser component to a panel, frame, etc as you would any other control. Another feature (inherited from the JFileChooser ) you would probably want to take advantage of is the ability to hide the OK/Cancel buttons (as they don't really apply in an inline component scenario). Here is how you do that:

inlineChooser.setControlButtonsAreShown(false);

Here is a screenshot:

... and here is a full source code implementation of the details discussed here today:

package com.javalobby.tnt.l2fprod;
 
import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import java.beans.PropertyChangeEvent;
import java.beans.PropertyChangeListener;
import java.io.File;
 
import javax.swing.*;
 
import com.l2fprod.common.swing.JDirectoryChooser;
import com.l2fprod.common.swing.plaf.LookAndFeelAddons;
 
public class JDirectoryChooserTest {
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		try {
			UIManager.setLookAndFeel(UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName());
			LookAndFeelAddons.setAddon(LookAndFeelAddons
					.getBestMatchAddonClassName());
		}
		catch(Exception e) {
		}
 
		final JFrame frame = new JFrame();
 
		frame.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
		JDirectoryChooser inlineChooser = new JDirectoryChooser();
		inlineChooser.setControlButtonsAreShown(false);
		inlineChooser.addPropertyChangeListener(new PropertyChangeListener() {
			public void propertyChange(PropertyChangeEvent evt) {
				String prop = evt.getPropertyName();
				// If the directory changed, don't show an image.
				if(JFileChooser.SELECTED_FILE_CHANGED_PROPERTY.equals(prop)) {
					File file = (File) evt.getNewValue();
					System.out.println("Inline Selection: " + file.getAbsolutePath());
				}
 
			};
		});
 
		JButton button = new JButton("Show Directory Chooser");
		button.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
			public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
				JDirectoryChooser chooser = new JDirectoryChooser();
				int choice = chooser.showOpenDialog(frame);
				if(choice == JDirectoryChooser.CANCEL_OPTION) {
					System.out.println("User Canceled");
				}
				else {
					System.out.println("Dialog Selection: "
							+ chooser.getSelectedFile().getAbsolutePath());
				}
			}
		});
 
		frame.getContentPane().add(inlineChooser, BorderLayout.CENTER);
		frame.getContentPane().add(button, BorderLayout.SOUTH);
 
		frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.DISPOSE_ON_CLOSE);
		frame.pack();
		frame.setVisible(true);
 
	}
 
}

Until next time,

R.J. Lorimer
rj -at- javalobby.org
http://www.coffee-bytes.com