Question

What’s the correct way to get a JFrame to close, the same as if the user had hit the X close button, or pressed Alt + F4 (on Windows)?

I have my default close operation set the way I want, via:

setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);

It does exactly what I want with the aforementioned controls. This question isn’t about that.

What I really want to do is cause the GUI to behave in the same way as a press of X close button would cause it to behave.

Suppose I were to extend WindowAdaptor, then add an instance of my adapter as a listener via addWindowListener(). I would like to see the same sequence of calls through windowDeactivated(), windowClosing(), and windowClosed() as would occur with the X close button. Not so much tearing up the window as telling it to tear itself up, so to speak.

Answer 1

If you want the GUI to behave as if you clicked the X close button then you need to dispatch a window closing event to the Window. The ExitAction from Closing An Application allows you to add this functionality to a menu item or any component that uses Actions easily.

frame.dispatchEvent(new WindowEvent(frame, WindowEvent.WINDOW_CLOSING));