Question

I have written two methods that take and return a string. One converts from English to Pig Latin and vice versa. I have two JTextFields (one English and the other Piglatin- for user input). Likewise, two JButtons: “To English” and “To Pig Latin”. I am confused how to use action listeners. It looks like it is possible to just have one ActionListener execute everything you want “on-click”, however I am confused about how it knows which button you pushed. I instinctively want to make two ActionListeners for each button, whereby when the button is clicked the appropriate code will be executed.

Could someone please show and/or explain to me how this all works?
Summary of how I understand everything so far:

1. Type English words into JTextField
2. Click “To Pig Latin” button
3. ActionListener somehow knows the “To Pig Latin” button is clicked and executes the toPigLatin() method with the JTextField text as a parameter. (Assuming JTextField input is automatically considered a String type, really have not got that far yet).
4. The String returned from that method is output to the Pig Latin JTextField for user to see.

Thanks everyone!

I found what I was looking for. Sorry I posted it on the wrong Forum and thanks for migrating it over here where it belongs…I meant to post it here! 🙂 For anyone trying to figure out how to make it so each button executes a certain block of code when clicked use the following: [ActionEvent].getActionCommand().equals(“[Name of Button]”)
Here’s my final solution if anyone is interested:

public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
    if (e.getActionCommand().equals("To Pig Latin")){
        String english = English.getText();
        PigLatin.setText(englishToPigLatin(english));
    }
    if (e.getActionCommand().equals("To English")){
        String piglatin = PigLatin.getText();
        English.setText(pigLatinToEnglish(piglatin));
    }
    String piggyCount = Integer.toString(pigCount);
    countP.setText("Number of Successful Word Translations:   English: "+piggyCount+"   ");
    String englishyCount = Integer.toString(englishCount);
    countE.setText(String.format("Pig-Latin: "+englishyCount));
}

Thanks again everyone who tried to help me out!

Answer 1

There’s a good tutorial on ActionListeners here. The easiest way to use the same listener for two buttons is to call e.getActionCommand() on the ActionEvent passed to the actionPerformed function. That will return a string with the label of the button, which you can then use in an if statement to perform the appropriate action.