Java Swing Tutorial

Swing is the principal GUI toolkit for the Java programming language. It's part of the Java Foundation Classes API, which offers a graphical user interface (GUI) for Java applications.

Building efficient GUI apps get easy with all the components that come with a swing in Java. Java programming language is structured programming, and with the rising demand, it is essential to learn all Java programming fundamentals. This article addresses swing in Java and the Java swing class hierarchy.

Swing is a library in the Java Foundation Classes (JFC) that expands on the abstract window toolkit (AWT) and provides enhanced functionality and additional UI elements. Extended components have top-notch event handling and drag-and-drop capabilities — introducing java swing — introducing the significance of the swing java tutorial.

Swing is included in the standard Java distribution and features about four times as many User Interface (UI) components as AWT. The AWT is a constrained implementation that is not nearly capable of supplying the components necessary for constructing the complex GUIs that are required in today's commercial applications. It is because the needs for today's application GUIs have changed.

When compared to the resources offered by Swing, the AWT component set is plagued with quite a few flaws and uses up a significant amount of the system's available resources. Programmers that create graphical user interfaces for commercial applications began to show much interest in its Classes.

1. Swing is available for use in creating GUIs.
2. Swing may use to develop the graphical user interfaces of server-side and client-side programs.
3. The original code for the Swing framework wrote entirely in Java.
4. The Abstract Windowing Toolkit includes the Swing library (Abstract Window Toolkit). 
5. Swing allows for a more customizable and flexible user experience and access to more robust building blocks.
6. Swing components in Java may run on any supported platform and are very efficient.

Table of Contents What is Java Swing? Benefits of Java Swing Using Java Swing Features of Java Swing Common Java Swing Components Advantages of Swing Steps to create JFrame in Java Container Class J button Classes Purpose of Layout Manager MVC Connection MVC Architecture

What is Java Swing?

Java Swing is a graphical user interface toolkit part of the Java Foundation Class (JFC). It is used to create Java-based applications that run various platforms, including Windows, MAC OS, and Linux. Swing provides a rich set of widgets, including buttons, labels, trees, and tables.

Benefits of using java swing

• Swing is a platform-independent, “model-view-controller” Framework for java, which is also the primary GUI toolkit for the java platform.
• Swing provides rich widgets to build sophisticated user interfaces.
  
• Swing also provides a pluggable look-and-feel architecture. It allows applications to have a consistent look and feel across platforms.
  
• Swing is designed to provide a lightweight component architecture. It results in a smaller footprint and improved performance.

How to use Java Swing

It would be best if you had a basic understanding of java before using Java Swing. It includes understanding how to create and compile Java programs using the Java Program Kit (JDK). You should also be familiar with the swing class hierarchy. In addition to the core swing classes, you must import the package to handle events in swing components.

Java Swing is used to developing graphical user interfaces and other applications. Swing is a component-based framework that includes a rich set of widgets, such as buttons, labels, and text fields. It also provides a set of layout managers that allow you to control the size and position of components on a window or panel.

In addition, Swing provides a set of graphics and utility classes that make it easy to create and manipulate images, fonts, colors, and other graphical objects.

Swing applications are event-driven. Event–handling code is generally placed in a separate class, called an event listener, registered with the component that generates the events. When an event occurs, the event listener is notified and can take appropriate action.

Swing is platform-independent. The same code on one platform will run on any other platform that supports java. It makes it possible to write once and run anywhere.

Swing is also extensible. Developers can create their custom components and add them to the Swing toolkit.

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Features of Java Swing

• Pluggable look and feel.
• Uses MVC architecture.
• Lightweight components.
• Platform Independent.
• Advance Features such as JTrappedPane, JTable, JScollPane etc.
• The GUI of a Java app that uses Swing components is independent of the operating system the app executes since Java deploys any client system.

Common java swing components

Java Swing is used to develop graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and other applications. Swing is a component-based framework that includes a rich set of widgets, such as buttons, labels, text fields, combo boxes, radio buttons, sliders, scroll panes, toolbars, progress bars, text areas, and tabbed panes.

It also provides a set of layout managers that allow you to control the size and position of components on a window or panel. In addition, Swing provides a set of graphics and utility classes that make it easy to create and manipulate images, fonts, colors, and other graphical objects.

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Advantages of Java Swing

The advantages are as follows:

• Swing components mainly vary in terms of visual style and user interface, depending on the package.
• Double buffering is a primary feature of Java Swing.
• The primary adaptability comes from its usage of MVC design principles, which ensure a wide range of possible user interfaces.
• It's designed to function identically to AWT's native components and even has a few extras thrown in for good measure.
• All the new parts are a part of the swing by default, so debugging is easy.
• The software and its constituent parts are cross-platform.
• Lightweight is so named because it uses fewer resources than AWT, its primary competitor.

Short Way to Create a JFrame in Java

• By instantiating Jframe Class.
• By Extending the JFrame class.

Container Class

A container class is any class that contains other components. At least one container class is required when developing a GUI application.

Generally speaking, there are three distinct categories of container classes:

1. Panel - A tool for arranging windowed elements.
2. Frame- A fully operational Window with tabs, icons, and titles is a Frame.
3. Dialog - A dialogue box appears, similar to a pop-up window but with limited functionality compared to the frame.

Use of JButton classes

It is used to make a button with a label. When the button is pushed, something will happen because of the ActionListener. It comes from the AbstractButton class and works on any platform.

Purpose of a layout manager

To arrange the components inside a container, we use the layout manager. There are several layout managers:

1. Border layout.
2. Flow Layout.
3. Grid Bag layout.

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About MVC connection

1) A visual component is usually made up of three different parts:

1. The appearance of the component when rendered on the screen.
2. The process in which the component responds to the user.
3. The component's related state information.

2) Model-view-controller, or MVC for short, is a component architecture that has stood the test of time and has shown to be incredibly successful.

1. In MVC technology, the model is the same as the component's state information.
2. The view controls how the component looks on the screen, including any parts of the idea that depending on the model's current state.
3. The controller tells the part how to respond to the user.

3) As detailed below, even the most basic swing parts offer advantages over their AWT counterparts.

1. Swing buttons and labels can either display pictures instead of text or both text and images simultaneously.
2. The bounds of the majority of swing components are simply modifiable.
3. It is not required that the components of swings be rectangular.
4. The most recent iterations of aggressive technology, like screen readers, can effortlessly extract data from swing components.

MVC Architecture

In the following manner, the Swing API architecture adheres to the loosely based MVC architecture.

1. Model represents component’s data.
2. View represents a visual representation of the component’s data.
3. Controller takes the input from the user on the view and reflects the changes in the component’s data.
4. Swing component has a Model as a separate element, while the view and controller parts are clubbed in the user interface elements.

 

Conclusion:

Java is a popular programming language used to develop desktop and web applications. It is one of the most popular programming languages that is used today. Java programming language is a multi-paradigm programming language. Java is a programming language used to develop applications in different programming paradigms. It supports procedural programming and functional programming paradigms as well.

You can create a desktop-style application with the help of Java Swing. Creating desktop–style applications is quite similar to creating a web application, but in this case, you will have to build a desktop-style application with the help of a swing toolkit.

This article aims to show how to create a simple desktop-style application with the help of the Swing Toolkit. The next step is creating an application with a single JFrame containing an image and text messages. We will use JFrame as a container for our application. 

The only difference between this and a typical web application is that we will build it on the desktop instead of on the web.