Question

I have a program that takes a screenshot of my gui. It automatically saves the .gif file to the eclipse project directory. What I would like is to have it asking a user where to save the image. Basically so the user can browse the file directory and choose the directory.
Here’s the code I have:

public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event) {
try{
       String fileName = JOptionPane.showInputDialog(null, "Save file", 
null, 1);

       if (!fileName.toLowerCase().endsWith(".gif")){
         JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "Error: file name must end with \".gif\".",
           null, 1);
       }
       else{             
         BufferedImage image = new BufferedImage(panel2.getSize().width, 
           panel2.getSize().height, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);
         panel2.paint(image.createGraphics());
         ImageIO.write(image, "gif", new File(fileName));
         JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "Screen captured successfully.",
null, 1);
       }
}
catch(Exception e){}

Answer 1

I would use a file chooser dialog instead of a JOptionPane. Here is a link for the tutorial.

Example:
First of all you have to declare JFileChooser object in your class and initialize it.

public Class FileChooserExample{
   JFileChooser fc;
   FileChooserExample(...){
      fc = new JFileChooser();// as a parameter you can put path to initial directory to open
      ...
   }

Now create another method:

private String getWhereToSave(){
    int retVal = fc.showSaveDialog(..);
    if(retVal == JFileChooser.APPROVE_OPTION){
        File file = fc.getSelectedFile();
        return file.getAbsolutePath();
    }
    return null;
}

This method returns to you the absolute path which user selected. retVal indicates which button was pressed (Save or Cancel). And if it was pressed Save then you handle the selected file.

Then you have this method you can incorporate this with your code. Instead of this line:

String fileName = JOptionPane.showInputDialog(null, "Save file", null, 1);

Write:

String fileName = getWhereToSave();