Question

I wanted to make a very simple click counter in Java. It works, but every time when I stop clicking the Click Me button, number of clicks resets. I tried to solve this problem using static variable called clicks. I know this might sound like a dumb question, but how do you actually prevent the variable from reseting itself.

here is the code I wrote.

    package clickcounter;

import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.event.FocusEvent;
import java.awt.event.FocusListener;
import java.awt.event.MouseEvent;
import java.awt.event.MouseListener;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JLabel;


public class ClickCounter extends JFrame implements MouseListener{
    private JButton b1 = new JButton("Click me");
    private static int clicks;
    private JLabel info = new JLabel();

    public ClickCounter()
    {
        super("Click counter");
        setSize(250, 150);
        setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        b1.addMouseListener(this);
        BorderLayout bor = new BorderLayout();
        setLayout(bor);
        info.setEnabled(false);
        add(BorderLayout.NORTH, b1);
        add(BorderLayout.CENTER, info);
        setVisible(true);
    }


    public static void main(String[] args) {
        ClickCounter cc = new ClickCounter();
    }

    @Override
    public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e) {
        clicks = e.getClickCount();
        info.setText("Number of clicks " + clicks);
        info.repaint();
    }

    @Override
    public void mousePressed(MouseEvent e) {
        // ignore
    }

    @Override
    public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent e) {
        //ignore
    }

    @Override
    public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent e) {
        // ignore
    }

    @Override
    public void mouseExited(MouseEvent e) {
       // ignore
    }

}

Answer 1

e.getClickCount() is used to provide details about the ‘click’. It helps applications to respond on double, triped, et.c clicks. So when the user stops clicking it is reset again.

Replace

clicks = e.getClickCount();

with

// *Add* the number of clicks that occurred to the click variable
clicks += e.getClickCount();

And your counter is not resetting anymore.

Note: Making clicks static is not required in this situation.