Question

I have read about MVC but am having doubts on how to implement the concept in Java with Swing. Here’s what I’m going for:

The model:
ListOfThings contains a Collection of Thing objects.

The controller:
Controller instanciates ListOfThings and populates it with a “add” method (internally creates a new Thing and adds it to the Collection)

The view:
A Swing interface with a ListOfThingsPanel which will contain ThingPanel components to represent the model. Both extend JPanel. ThingPanel contains various components meant to display the data of the Thing it’s linked to.
It also has a button which adds a new (empty) thing to the list.
The click event calls the Controller‘s addThing() method which asks ListOfThings to add a new Thing to its list. ListOfThings has an event/listener system and ListOfThingsPanel listens to it to know when it should refresh the view.

Am I properly following the MVC concept by doing it like this?

Update:
I’m still learning Java but I have coding experience and would prefer to learn the theory and attempt it by my own means before using premade frameworks. While I’m aware Swing implements the MVC pattern, I have read it does it in a specific way (View and Controller combined) which might not be the best and not applicable in other circumstances. I’m a bit wary until I can make sure “Swing MVC” is not different from “MVC”, or that the differences won’t impact my understanding of the underlying ideas.

One thing of import to me is to learn to really separate the model from the view to allow me to ultimately create various views of various types (Swing but also console or update to JavaFX for example) This is why I’d like to avoid anything Swing specific outside of the view part itself.

Answer 1

While the Swing framework already implements a form of MVC (explicit models; JXyz & UI classes = controller & view), this strict separation is rarely used on application level and looks rather weird.

To start I suggest to follow the following design:

• implement the client-side business logic with POJOs
• wrap the POJOs with custom Swing models where needed (ListModel, TableModel)
• Use a GUI builder to design the GUI
• Use the Mediator pattern to listen for events (a custom subclass of JPanel listens for events of its children and updates other children or fires own custom events if needed)

If you want to go a step further, use a RCP such as the NetBeans Platform (very recommended).

Edit:

And here is the article explaining MVC in Swing:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/architecture-142923.html