Recreating Buttons

[Donovan Brock]

Hello,

Is it possible to remove a button from an already created pane and then to create a button in place of it, or could you replace a button by creating one on top of it?


Thank you.

[Keith Lynn]

Do you have to get rid of the button?

You can change the text of an existing button.

[Lambert Stein]

I do not know any reason for you to remove the button - but if you HAVE to hide it, there should be a Button.hide() or something (I'm kinda new to java).

[Ken Blair]

Yes, you can remove a component from the containment hierarchy. Yes, you can add a different button to the container as well. Whether or not that new button is in the same place as the old button is going to depend entirely on your layout and whether or not any state or constraints that are used by the layout are the same.

Example:

final JPanel panel = new JPanel(new BorderLayout());
final JButton button1 = new JButton("Click Me 1");
final JButton button2 = new JButton("Click Me 2");
panel.add(button1, BorderLayout.WEST);
button1.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
        panel.remove(button1);
        panel.add(button2, BorderLayout.WEST);
    }
});
button2.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
        panel.remove(button2);
        panel.add(button1, BorderLayout.WEST);
    }
});
// This is just to provide something to compare the button locations against
final JTextArea area = new JTextArea(5, 10);
area.setLineWrap(false);
panel.add(area, BorderLayout.CENTER);
 
final JFrame frame = new JFrame();
frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
frame.setContentPane(panel);
frame.pack();
frame.setVisible(true);

The two buttons happen to have a very similar size because the text is roughly the same size. If the buttons had vastly different sizes then obviously that would cause a problem since BorderLayout honors them.