JFileChooser modification

[perza metasta]

I did this


JFileChooser selectFolderDialog = new JFileChooser ();

selectFolderDialog.setApproveButtonText("Select");

and expected to see a file chooser with text "Select" in the approve
button. However, it was still "Save".

What went wrong?

br, perza

[Rob Spoor]

Welcome to the Ranch!

I tried it as well, and oddly enough it ignores the explicitly set value. So I checked the look&feel UI class (for the metal loo&feel that's javax.swing.plaf.metal.MetalFileChooserUI), but that uses BasicFileChooserUI.getApproveButtonText(JFileChooser) and that returns the JFileChooser's getApproveButtonText() value unless that's null - which it isn't because we've just set it.

So I did some testing with the UI:

import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import java.lang.reflect.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import javax.swing.event.*;
import javax.swing.plaf.metal.*;

public class Test extends MetalFileChooserUI
{
    public Test(JFileChooser filechooser) throws NoSuchFieldException
    {
        super(filechooser);
    }

    public String getApproveButtonText(JFileChooser fc)
    {
        String text = super.getApproveButtonText(fc);
        System.out.println("Approve button text: " + text);
        return text;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception
    {
        UIManager.put("FileChooser.saveButtonText", "Goodbye");
        JFileChooser chooser = new JFileChooser()
        {
            {
                setUI(new Test(this));
            }
        };
        chooser.setApproveButtonText("Hello");
        chooser.showSaveDialog(null);
    }
}

Output:
Approve button text: Open
Approve button text: Hello
Approve button text: Goodbye
Approve button text: Goodbye
Approve button text: Goodbye
Approve button text: Goodbye

Odd enough. The text is retrieved correctly, but then ignored. So I checked the source of JFileChooser.showSaveDialog:

    public int showSaveDialog(Component parent) throws HeadlessException {
	setDialogType(SAVE_DIALOG);
	return showDialog(parent, null);
    }

Next up: JFileChooser.setDialogType:

    public void setDialogType(int dialogType) {
	if(this.dialogType == dialogType) {
	    return;
	}
	if(!(dialogType == OPEN_DIALOG || dialogType == SAVE_DIALOG || dialogType == CUSTOM_DIALOG)) {
	    throw new IllegalArgumentException("Incorrect Dialog Type: " + dialogType);
	}
	int oldValue = this.dialogType;
	this.dialogType = dialogType;
	if(dialogType == OPEN_DIALOG || dialogType == SAVE_DIALOG) {
	    setApproveButtonText(null);
	}
	firePropertyChange(DIALOG_TYPE_CHANGED_PROPERTY, oldValue, dialogType);
    }

And there's the culprit: setApproveButtonText(null). So, apparently we're not allowed to overwrite the approve button text for open or save dialogs!

The solution: don't use showOpenDialog or showSaveDialog - use showDialog. By setting the dialog type to JFileChooser.OPEN_DIALOG (which is the default) it will behave like an open dialog as usual. Change it to JFileChooser.SAVE_DIALOG to use it as a save dialog.

[perza metasta]

Thanks a lot Rob, now I got it working!

br, perza

[Rob Spoor]

You're welcome.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Some nice detective work . . . It would have been better not to have that side-effect, or if they insist on having it, saying something in the documentation.

[Stephan van Hulst]

Nice work Rob.

[Maneesh Godbole]

@Rob.
Just wow!

[Rob Spoor]

Well, it annoys me to not know why something doesn't work like you expect to, so I try to find the cause. In this case the problem intrigued me so much I just had to find the cause and solution.