Question

How can you process command line arguments in a Java Swing program?

EDIT: What I want to do is have the user give a file path as the arg. Then I set the text of a jTextPane to the contents of that file.

Answer 1

The only way is through the main method when you run the Java class file.

You do the following in the command line once compiled; java NameOfClassFile a b c d

For example to print them out as an array of command line arguments:

public static void main(String[] args)
{
    for(String arg : args)
        System.out.println(arg);
}

I don’t know of anyway to pass command line arguments to a currently running Java Swing program. Not sure if you can.

To display a files contents on a JTextPane you can use args[0] a a command line argument to the file path using:

JTextPane pane = new JTextPane();
JFrame frame = new JFrame("Example");
frame.add(pane);
frame.setVisible(true);
File file = new File(args[0]);
pane.setPage(file.toURL().toString());
frame.pack();

If you want more than one files contents just use java NameOfClassFile file1 file2 file3
Then you can use args[0] args[1] args[2] to get the file path and modify the above code to put on a JTextPane.