Question

For architecture and design purposes I would like to design my GUI with a class for each card in a Java Swing CardLayout. and then have a mainapp that builds the GUI. I am having trouble doing this right now.

I would like to example have a class for the main menu with all the button locations etc. and then just instantiate that card and add it to the layout in another class. Does anyone know how to achieve this?

Answer 1

Perhaps you want to give your class that uses the CardLayout a public loadCard method, something like

public void loadCard(JComponent component, String key) {
  cardHolderPanel.add(component, key);
}

where cardHolderPanel is the container that holds the cards.

Since your creating classes to act as cards, consider having them all extend from a base abstract class or an interface that has a method that allows this class to hold its own key String. Either that or simply use the JComponent name property to have a component hold its own key String, one that can easily be obtained via getName().

For a more detailed answer, you may need to give us more details on your current application and its structure.