what action listener interface is doing in this code ?

[naved momin]

this is the constructor that set the clock on the label and also keep us updated with time
i now that this is done by a timer but i thing i didnt understand here is the what actionlistener interface is doing here because as far i as know action listener is occured when we want some events like clicking a button but here we are not even clicking on the label but the clock works how can any one explain ?

 public Clock() {
        initComponents();




        int delay = 1000;

        ActionListener al = new ActionListener() {

       DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("hh:mm:ss");
            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {

                Date  d = new Date();
                String timer =  df.format(d);
               time.setText("time : " + timer);
//               time.setVisible(true);
               


            }
        };


        Timer timer1 = new Timer(delay , al);
        timer1.start();

    }

[Rob Spoor]

ActionListener is used for so much more than only button clicks. If it were, I think the name would be ButtonListener instead of ActionListener. Right now, I can think of several other uses:
- menu item clicks
- JTextField enter presses
- Timer, as your example has shown

[Harsha Smith]

when you invoke start() method on javax.swing.Timer object, it starts sending action events to its listeners.