Question

I’m making a game client/server and I’m having a new thread update some info on the client GUI (which is using Swing). I’m trying to use SwingUtilities but it’s not working. Also, I heard SwingUtilities creates a new thread everytime you use it so I’m looking for a new way as well (I have 10 or so JTextFields to be updated). Is there a way to do it without using SwingUtilities? Here is what I have right now.

SwingUtilities.invokeLater(    
        new Runnable() {    
           public void run()    
           {    
              Client.status.setText("status = "+status); 
           }    
        });

Answer 1

I don’t know where you heard about “SwingUtilities creates a new thread” from, but I think you’ve either misunderstood or being informed incorrectly. SwingUtilities.invokeLater places the Runnable onto the end of the Event Dispatcher’s queue. The queue then processes this event within the it’s own thread context (in time), calling Run, there is no “new” thread created for this process.

As to your question.

You may need to call validate() (and possibly repaint()) on the fields parent container to encourage it update 😉

And no, there isn’t any other way to sync the UI across threads, that’s the reason for SwingUtilities