JMenu ActionPerformed Question

[Dennis Putnam]

I am implementing menus using JMenu. I have recently encountered a problem that I don't know how to resolve. I have 2 menus that happen to have the same named JMenuItem. In order to resolve this I need to determine which JMenu the JMenuItem came from. However, I don't see how to determine that from what is available in the ActionEvent object. What am I missing? TIA.

[Michael Dunn]

ActionEvent.getSource()?

[Dennis Putnam]

Nope. That tells me the JMenuItem not the JMenu.

[Michael Dunn]

SwingUtilities.getAncestorOfClass(..) might suit

[edit]

actually, you still might be able to use getSource()

each component has a 'name' property.
use this to ID the JMenu.

[Dennis Putnam]

Thanks but neither of those worked for me. Both returned null.

JMenuItem source=(JMenuItem) arg0.getSource();
JMenu using=(JMenu) SwingUtilities.getAncestorOfClass(getClass(), source);
System.out.println(using.getName())

null pointer exception

JMenuItem source=(JMenuItem) arg0.getSource();
System.out.println(source.getName());

printed null

[Campbell Ritchie]

Looks like non‑object‑oriented programming to me. Give each menu item its own action listener. Then that problem will not occur.

[Dennis Putnam]

That was what I was thinking. Each JMenu has to have its own ActionPerformed method. Its probably easier for me to just avoid duplicating JMenuItems buy altering the names slightly. Thanks.

[Rob Spoor]

FYI, JMenu using=(JMenu) SwingUtilities.getAncestorOfClass(getClass(), source); will try to find an ancestor component of this class. If you want a JMenu, replace getClass() with JMenu.class (the Class object for JMenu).

But I agree that a separate ActionListener (or even better - Action) is a much cleaner solution.