Question

I’m looking for the following behaviour in a JPanel Layout (Swing): basically it would arrange the components in a Vertical way, one bellow each other.

When the components can’t fit vertically in the container, it should add the next one in a new row. This would continue dynamically, adding new rows as needed.

It would look likes this, after adding 3 labels:

+--------------------------+
|  label1                  |
|  label2                  |
|  label3                  |
+--------------------------+

After adding: 2 more labels:

+--------------------------+
|  label1  label4          |
|  label2  label5          |
|  label3                  |
+--------------------------+

Finally, after adding 2 more labels it would look like this:

+--------------------------+
|  label1  label4  label7  |
|  label2  label5          |
|  label3  label6          |
+--------------------------+

Is this behaviour possible to achieve with one of the current layouts?

Should I create one myself?

How would you solve this solution?

Answer 1

Yes, it is possible. Try using MigLayout.

Here’s a code snippet which illustrates the usage:

JPanel panel = new JPanel(new MigLayout("fill, flowY, wrap 4));
panel.add(new JLabel("row 1, column 1"));
panel.add(new JLabel("row 2, column 1"));
panel.add(new JLabel("row 3, column 1"));
panel.add(new JLabel("row 1, column 2")); // etc.