Question

I have a program that builds the GUI in the constructor. I need a Thread separate from the EDT to run immediately after the object in question is constructed. Could anyone point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

What you want to use is a SwingWorker<T,V>. In the doInBackground method, open the connection and start fetching data. When you have enough data to update the gui, call the publish method. Implement the process method to update the gui with the new data from publish, and finally, implement the done method to notify the user when you’re finished fetching data.

The Swing Worker is a generic, so when you construct it you need to provide two types: T and V. V is the type for the data passed between publish and process methods and T is the type returned by doInBackground and passed to done.