Question

I’ve just noticed that a JButton does not change it text to the NAME value of the coupled Action object when at least the following 2 things are true:

• the button’s preferredSize property is not the default value.
• the button’s text property is not the default of “” (empty).

It could be that there are other combinations of property values that make the button ignore the name of the action, however when I put one or the other on default, it works.

I’ll state the obvious that the action is properly registered, and the hideActionText property is false. Additionally, I should say that I set these properties via the properties panel in the Netbeans GUI designer.

A few google searches brought up nothing. Is this normal behaviour and can it be resolved?

Answer 1

I would say two things:

1. Why do you force the preferredSize of the JButton (otherwise it is just based on the text and icon it contains)?
2. Why would you set the text of the JButton if you want the one coming from the Action NAME?

I don’t see any problems in the described behaviour. If no text is provided, then it defaults to the NAME of the Action, if any. Else, it will be just empty.
If you want to force the preferredSize, so be it, you have all rights to do so, under some circumstances.

If you want the Action NAME to appear, simply don’t set another “text” value on the JButton.

EDIT

---

If I set the text but not the preferredSize, I still see the button text (even if the text is too small too fit, you get “…” on your text). Test it for yourself on this SSCCE:

import java.awt.Dimension;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.io.IOException;

import javax.swing.AbstractAction;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JFrame;

public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        JFrame frame = new JFrame();
        frame.setTitle("frame");
        final JButton button = new JButton(new AbstractAction("Action text") {

            @Override
            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
                System.err.println("Hello");
            }
        });
        button.setText("Button text which is a lot longer");
        button.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(100, 30));
        frame.add(button);
        frame.pack();
        frame.setVisible(true);
    }
}