Scrollbar in textarea of a panel dissappears

[Raymond Brown]

I have created a tabbed pane app that works great for what I need except for one major issue. I have copied the snippet code below. It seems when I select the file to be displayed it pasted in the textarea but no scrollbars are added and I can't see all of the data. I thought by creating a Panel and adding that to the tabbed pane I wold be fine. Then in the created panel I would create a textarea and add scrollbars to it. Alas no work. Any help is appreciated.

 
  // *****************************************************************
        JPanel errorLogPanel = createErrorPanel();
        tabbedPane.addTab("Error log", icon, errorLogPanel, "Shows error log and debug information depending on verbose level chosen.");
        tabbedPane.setMnemonicAt(2, KeyEvent.VK_3);
        // *****************************************************************
 

 
    private JPanel createErrorPanel()
{
    JButton file = new JButton("Select Error Log");
    String inputLog;
        final JTextArea eText = new JTextArea();
        eText.setAutoscrolls(true); eText.setEditable(false);
        eText.setLineWrap(false); 
        
    final JPanel main = new JPanel();
    main.setLayout(new BorderLayout(10,10));  // the two means 2-pixel space arounding each north, south - east & west
        
    final JPanel south = new JPanel();
    JButton clearLog = new JButton("Clear Log");
    main.add(south, BorderLayout.SOUTH);
    
    final JPanel north = new JPanel();
    north.add(file);
    main.add(north, BorderLayout.NORTH);
    
    
    JPanel center = new JPanel();
    main.add(center, BorderLayout.CENTER);
        
    file.addActionListener(new ActionListener() { public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ae)
        { 
    JFileChooser fc = new JFileChooser();
    String currentLine;
    File file=null;
    int returnVal = fc.showOpenDialog(north);
 
                if (returnVal == JFileChooser.APPROVE_OPTION) 
                {
                    file = fc.getSelectedFile();
                
    try
{
    BufferedReader inputStream = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file));
    eText.append("File being read in is " + file + "\n");
    while ( (currentLine = inputStream.readLine()) != null)
    {
    eText.append(currentLine + "\n");
    }
        inputStream.close();
}
    catch (IOException err) { System.err.println("Error:  "); err.printStackTrace(); }
    
                } 
                else 
                {
                    eText.append("No file was selected.");
                }
        }
        });
       
    main.add(eText);
 
    return (main);
    }// end of createErrorPanel
 

[Gregg Bolinger]

No scrollbars are added because you never created a JScrollPane object for the JTextArea.

JTextArea eText = new JTextArea();
JScrollPane scroll = new JScrollPane(eText);
main.add(scroll);

[Raymond Brown]

Thanks for the tip and your suggestion of course worked. I realized my ignorance of the complete understanding of the code I was using. I thought the eText.setAutoScroll(true); would do the same thing but realized that method is for JComponets and not for the manner I was using it in.

Thanks for the help and showing me the right way as well as for helping me learn the api better.