Enabling a disabled Menu Item

[Kelly Harris]

I am using a JMenuItem and wish for it to start of disabled and based on an event for it to be enable(true). I can set the item to true but it never shows up as enabled.
I looked for a refresh but only found a repaint. The repaint did not seem to work. Please help me.
Thanks,
Kelly Harris

[Angela Lamb]

You shouldn't need to do a repaint using setEnabled(true). Are you sure your event is coded correctly? It would be easier to help if you post some of the code.

[Kelly Harris]

Very straight forward code but it is thrown across multiple classes. I build the JMenuItem and then disable it. Add it to a JMenuBar. Along the lines a user can do a file->open that will trigger this item to be active. I would also like to use this with Copy/Cut/Paste under an edit menu.
I put together a little snippit of code that demonstrates what I am talking about.

  
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JMenu;
import javax.swing.JMenuBar;
import javax.swing.JMenuItem;
public class test extends JFrame
{
static JMenuBar      menuBar        = new JMenuBar();
static JMenu         menu           = new JMenu("Edit");
static JMenuItem     cutMenuItem    = new JMenuItem("Cut");
static JMenuItem     testMenuItem   = new JMenuItem("test");
public static void main(String[] args)
{
test              frame          = new test();
frame.process();
frame.resize( 400,400);
frame.show();
//System.exit(0);
} // main
public void process ()
{
cutMenuItem.setEnabled( false);
menu.add( cutMenuItem);
menu.add( testMenuItem);
menuBar.add( menu );
setJMenuBar( menuBar );
testMenuItem.addActionListener( getActionListenerFile());
} // main
public ActionListener getActionListenerFile() 
{
ActionListener   returnValue    = null;
returnValue      = new ActionListener() 
{
public void actionPerformed( ActionEvent evt) 
{
 menuItemAction(evt);
}
}; 
return returnValue;
} // menuItemAction
public void menuItemAction(ActionEvent evt ) 
{
cutMenuItem.enable(true);
} // menuItemAction
} // test

[Angela Lamb]

Here is your problem:

public void menuItemAction(ActionEvent evt )
{
    cutMenuItem.enable(true);
} // menuItemAction

enable(true) needs to be changed to setEnabled(true)

[Kelly Harris]

Thank you Angela. I do not know why I used the Enable Method. So what does Enable do? From what I read it should have worked.

[Angela Lamb]

The enable method is deprecated as of version 1.1 - that's why it no longer works correctly. It has been replaced by the setEnabled method.

[Kelly Harris]

Thanks again Angela, you are the best.