Question

I am Swing novice. I made a small app using JTree, JCheckBox, JList and JButton. I am using the associated model classes to store the presentation state. Works fine, except for the JButton. I’d like to update the button’s text according to a property of my model. Basically, it will change from log in/to log off whether the user is currently logged in. Unfortunatly, I can’t find a setText method in the ButtonModel interface. Can anybody tell me how to do this ?

Thanks. PW.

Answer 1

For a JButton you can use an Action as your model. The Action interface defines keys which are used by the JButton to retrieve its state from the Action, including one for the text: Action.NAME

If you look at the source code, the constructor with the Action (or simply the setAction method) uses more information from the Action then what can be retrieved from a ButtonModel. Same for other constructors, e.g.

public JButton(String text, Icon icon) {
    // Create the model
    setModel(new DefaultButtonModel());

    // initialize
    init(text, icon);
}

So it seems that you are correct in your assessment that the ButtonModel does not contain all information used to visualize a typical JButton