Question

I’m trying to open a window that has both an image and buttons in it. But I can’t seem to figure out how to add the button. The image displays great and the menu works fine, but no matter where I add the button (into the JLabel, JPanel, or JFrame), it doesn’t ever show…

Main:

public static void main(String[] args) {
    GUI myGUI = new GUI();
    myGUI.show();
}

GUI class: openImage is called when using the menu. The image then displays, but no button.

private JFrame myFrame;
private JPanel myPanel;
private JLabel myLabel;
public GUI()
{
    myFrame = new JFrame();
    initializePanel();
}

public void show()
{
    myFrame.setSize(600,600);
    myFrame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
    myFrame.addMouseListener(this);

    setupMenu(myFrame);     

    myFrame.setVisible(true);
}
private void initializePanel() 
{
       myPanel = new JPanel();
       myPanel.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(500,500));
       //myPanel.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
}
private void openImage(String fileName)
{
    try {
        myImage = ImageIO.read(new File(fileName));
    } catch (IOException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
    }    

    myLabel = getJLabel();

    JButton button = new JButton("ButtonClick");
        button.addActionListener(this);

    myFrame.setContentPane(myLabel);

    myPanel.add(button);
    myFrame.getContentPane().add(myPanel);

    myFrame.pack();
    myFrame.setSize(600,600);
}
private void setupMenu(JFrame window) {
        JMenuBar menubar = new JMenuBar();
        JMenu file = new JMenu("File");
        JMenuItem open = new JMenuItem("Open");
        open.addActionListener(this);
        file.add(open);
        menubar.add(file);
        window.setJMenuBar(menubar);
}

Answer 1

Your main issue is your setting the contentPane to be a JLabel — don’t do this! The contentPane needs to be opaque, needs to be built to be easily used as a Container and in your case, really should be a JPanel. JLabel I believe uses a null layout so it’s no surprise that your code shows no button. If you want to show a background image, make have myPanel constructed from an anonymous class that extends JPanel, override the paintComponent method in this class (calling super.paintComonent first in the method), and draw the image in this method. Then you can add components to the contentPane which will now use a FlowLayout (the default for a JPanel) and it will be opaque by default.

Also, if your goal is to swap items displayed in your GUI, use a CardLayout to do the swapping for you as this layout makes swapping components a breeze.