Question

I want to do this:
While the main Thread runs,
I want to execute a series of actions without disturbing the main thread and freezing the swing components and I can force stop the execution from the main Thread. And one of this actions can manipulate a swing component.

Some code to help imagining:

public class Test extends JFrame{
    public Test()
    {
        super("Test");
        JButton button = new JButton("Stop!");
        button.addActionListener(new ActionListener()
        {
            @Override
            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
            {
                //STOP THE EXECUTION
            }
        });
        this.add(button);

        //START OF EXECUTION
            System.out.println("FOO");
            System.out.println("BAR");
            button.setText("Hello");
            System.out.println("THIS");
        //END OF THE EXECUTION

        this.pack();
        this.setVisible(true);
    }
}

I’ve tried to use only Thread, it throws exception, I forgot what the exception was, but basically it says that I can’t manipulate the swing component from non AWT thread or something.

After that I tried using both Thread and swingUtilities, but they execute the swing component manipulation AFTER the execution done. How do I do this?

Answer 1

• see Oracle tutorial about Cuncurency in Swing

• Swing Workers methods publish(), process() and done() quite guaranted tha all output to the Swing GUI will be done on EDT

• SwingWokrer is implementetion for WorkersThread and Swing, and during its execution are all Swing JComponents accesible for Mouse and Key Events