Question

I’m still learning swing and sockets both, so bear with me. To learn I’m making a chat client/server system. Right now, I’m working on the client. My classes are

• Main (With the main method) code link
• Window (Sets up Swing components) code link
• ActLis(Handles all component action listeners from Window) code link
• SocketManager(Manages my sockets) code link

I set up a SocketManager object in Main when the program runs, but then when ActLis needs to use that socket to send a message I don’t know of a good way to get it from Main. Is what I’m doing completely ineffective and there is a better way to set it up, or is there a way to get my SocketManager object from my Main class that I don’t know? (I realize there are other problems in my code, but I’m just trying to get sockets to work for a start, I’m having a hard time with them.)

Answer 1

You have a few options:

1) Have a ActLis object in the Main class and pass Main’s reference to SocketManager to it

public class Main
{
   public static void main(String[] args)
   {
       ActList        a = new ActList(...);
       SocketManager sm = new SocketManager(...);

       a.sendMessageWithSocket(sm); //here you pass Main's reference to SocketManager 
   }                                //object to the ActLis class for use
} 

2) Let the ActLis class have a reference to the SocketManager object, set in its constructor

public class ActLis
{
    private SocketManager sm;

    public ActLis(SocketManager sm)
    {
        this.sm = sm;
    }
}

These are probably the most simple ways to do this.