help get menu items to work pleas

[Ronald Pruitt]

I have built a file menu with three buttons
New
Open
Save as
they show up fine but now how do i get them to work. this is for a program I'm trying to write that will open a blank file for NEW
open an existing file from a directory for OPEN and save a newly formed file in the SAVE AS function. Currently I add an action to the menu items with a simple item.addActionListener(this); call but I don't think that will work to get them to do what I want.

[Sean MacLean]

Perhaps a code snippet would help everyone here. The basic process is to create the menu items, add action listeners to them and then set up if/else blocks within the actionPerformed(AvtionEvent e ){} method to deal with the individual menu items. It's from within these if/else statement that you would put the functionality as you described it above (or better yet, calls to methods that provide this funtionality). I'm sure you've got all this together, so perhaps a look at you code could reveal the problem that you are having.
Sean

[Manfred Leonhardt]

Ron,
You are on the correct approach. If you are dealing with ASCII files and a TextArea I have included a simple code snippet to help you out.

  public String readFile( File file ) 
                throws FileNotFoundException, IOException
  {
    StringBuffer sBuf = new StringBuffer();
    BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader( new FileReader( file ) );
    String s = null;
    while( (s = in.readLine()) != null )
    {
      sBuf.append( s + "\n" );
    }
    in.close();
    return( sBuf.toString() );
  }
  public void writeFile( String output, File file )
                throws IOException
  {
    if( output.length() <= 0 )
    {
      return;
    }
    PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter( new BufferedWriter( 
                                         new FileWriter( file )  ) );
    out.println( output );
    out.flush();
    out.close();
  }
  public void actionPerformed( ActionEvent ae )
  {
    String cmd = ae.getActionCommand();
    if( cmd.equals( "New" ) )
    {
      // Clear textarea to give appearance of new file.
      textArea.setText( "" );
    }
    else if( cmd.equals ( "Open" ) )
    {
      // Open existing file
      // Maybe using FileDialog to get user file choice?
      JFileChooser fileDialog = new JFileChooser();
      fileDialog.showOpenDialog( this );
      // Open file once user has chosen it.
      File f = fileDialog.getSelectedFile();
      if( !f.exists() )
      {
        System.out.println( "File must exist! " );
        return;
      }
      // Read chosen file
      // Place contents into textArea.
      try
      {
        textArea.setText( readFile( f ) );
      }
      catch( FileNotFoundException e )
      {
        System.out.println( e.getMessage() );
        return;
      }
      catch( IOException e )
      {
        System.out.println( e.getMessage() );
        return;
      }
    }
    else if( cmd.equals( "Save" ) )
    {
      // Save file with specified name
      JFileChooser fileDialog = new JFileChooser();
      fileDialog.showSaveDialog( this );
      // Write the file.
      try
      {
        writeFile( textArea.getText(), 
                   fileDialog.getSelectedFile() );
      }
      catch( IOException e )
      {
        System.out.println( e.getMessage() );
        return;
      }
    }
    else
    {
      // Quit entire application.
      dispose();
      System.exit( 0 );
    }
  }

Enjoy,
Manfred.

[Ronald Pruitt]

Just wanted to say Thank you for your help.
Ron