How to draw an etched line?

[Tris Rabar]

Hi there,
I want to draw/place an etched line across a JFrame/JPanel. How do I go about doing this? (A line to separate stuff placed on the panel.)
Thanks for any assistance.

[Nathan Pruett]

If you need to be able to move the line around to resize the components on either side, you should use the JSplitPane class that comes with Swing. If you just need a line, you can use a JSeparator kinda like this :

import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;
 
public class HalfPanel extends JPanel {
    protected JPanel p1, p2;
    protected JComponent top, bottom;
 
    public HalfPanel() {
        this( null, null );
    }
 
    public HalfPanel( JComponent top, JComponent bottom ) {
        p1 = new JPanel();
        p1.setLayout( new BorderLayout() );
        if( top != null ) {
            p1.add( top );
        }
        p1.add( new JSeparator(), BorderLayout.SOUTH );
        p2 = new JPanel();
        p2.setLayout( new BorderLayout() );
        if( bottom != null ) {
            p2.add( bottom );
        }
        setLayout( new GridLayout( 2, 1 ) );
        add( p1 );
        add( p2 );
    }
 
    public static void main( String[] arg ) {
        JFrame f = new JFrame();
        f.setSize( 300, 300 );
        f.setDefaultCloseOperation( f.EXIT_ON_CLOSE );
        JLabel top = new JLabel( "top" );
        JLabel bottom = new JLabel( "bottom" );
        HalfPanel hp = new HalfPanel( top, bottom );
        f.getContentPane().add( hp );
        f.setVisible( true );
    }
}

-nate

[Tris Rabar]

Hey, thanks a lot! It's the JSeparator I needed, not the JSplitPane.
Great help...thanks a million. Works wonderfully!