Question

I have written a Swing application which has a main window.

Now I would like to display a configuration dialog before the main window is shown because depending on the output of the configuration dialog, the main window might have to be created differently.

I have read somewhere that a dialog should always have a parent window, however.

What is the proper way to create and display the configuration dialog under these circumstances? Should I make it a JDialog or a regular JFrame?

Answer 1

Use null to reference the parent window. This is an OK practice when there is no parent.

Then you are free to do something like this

String body = "Which will you choose?";
String title = "The Title";

int choice = JOptionPane.showConfirmDialog(null, body, title, JOptionPane.YES_NO_OPTION);
switch(choice) {
case JOptionPane.YES_OPTION:
    createAndDoWindowForYesOption(); break;
case JOptionPane.NO_OPTION:
    createAndDoWindowForNoOption(); break;
default:
    doNothing(); break;
}

Edit: I have used JOptionPane as an example only, as pointed out by @Mre this could be extended to JDialog if more functionality is required.