Question

I have a little application that opens a fileChooser when clicking a button and, after choosing a file, works with the contents of it. So, let’s say we have this pseudo-code:

    File file = new File();
    JFileChooser fileChooser = new JFileChooser();

    [...]

    actionPerformed() {
      file = fileChooser.getSelectedFile();
      doStuffWithFile(file);
    }

At this point, it seems the code is taking on a procedural style, because everything that happens with file now actually happens while still inside that actionPerformed()-method. I’m not sure if this ok.

Is this okay coding style? Intuitively, I would want to end actionPerformed() and have the methods to work on my file called from somewhere else. But how would I do that?

An idea would be to just set the new value of file inside actionPerformed(). Then I could get that value with a getter. But how so? It should be the next thing that happens.

I’ve seen a propertyChangeListener here at stackoverflow, but I’m not sure if that’s the right thing, too.

Answer 1

One option is multithreading. It would still do everything, but not in the event thread. for example:

actionPerformed(){
    new Thread(){
        public void run(){
            file = fileChooser.getSelectedFile();
            doStuffWithFile(file);
        }
     }.start()
}