Question

I’m trying to implement a simple window that contain two buttons Yes and No.

When clicking on Yes I want to disable the No button and when pressing on No I want to disable the Yes button.

I’ve implemented:

JButton btnYes = new JButton("Yes");
contentPane.add(btnYes);
btnYes.setActionCommand("Yes");
btnYes.addActionListener(this);

…the same for the No button…

Now I’m catching the event in this method:

public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
    if(e.getActionCommand().equals("Yes"))
    {
        //I know how to get the button that caused the event 
        //but I don't know how to disable the OTHER button.
        JButton source = (JButton)e.getSource();
        //Handle the source button...
    }

}

In the above method I have an access to the button that caused the event, but not to the other button.

What is the best way of getting the buttons?

Answer 1

You should just implement ActionListener as a nested class of your Dialog’s class, in this case you will have full access to all fields of outer class (in which you should store reference to buttons when your create them).

The bad dirty solution (that should NOT be used) still exists: to navigate to battens through getParent() of JButton and then through getChildren() of parents childrens. Just to show that it is possible anyway.