Multiple Views

[MrDave]

I have an application that needs to display different views in the same JFrame.

I tried creating a class which loads the JFrame and then have classes which inherit JPanel for each view I want to display.

I can load the first view (MainMenu) by adding it to the JFrame but I can't figure out how to add the next view to the JFrame when the user clicks a button in the MainMenu JPanel.

[PhQ]

JFrame2.setVisible(true);
JFrame1.setVisible(false);

Is that what you mean?

[Fubarable]

I think that you want to look up the Sun Swing tutorial that covers CardLayout as it will allow you to swap JPanels or any JComponent easily. You can find it here: CardLayout tutorial

[MrDave]

Cheers for the link but I still have the same problem.

The GUI class has the cardLayout and controls what is loads into the JFrame.

The mainMenu class loads at first but I need to make it so when a button is clicked in mainMenu is tells the GUI class to load the next view.

[Fubarable]

If you give your gui classes the appropriate public methods and allow your controller code (the action listeners for the menus) have a reference to the gui's, I think that you can solve this. If not, consider creating an sscce (see my link in my signature below) and post it here.

[MrDave]

Thanks for the help, I've finally solved the problem...just for reference this is what I did.

I was able to solve the problem using "singleton pattern" for the GUI class since I only ever need one instance of it.

I added a getInstance() and changeView() method to the GUI class which allowed me to change the view of the GUI instance from any other class via GUI.getInstance().changeView()

[Fubarable]

I was able to solve the problem using "singleton pattern" for the GUI class since I only ever need one instance of it.

Sorry, but this smells of bad design. Are you sure you want to do this and not simply pass a reference?

[MrDave]

Sorry, but this smells of bad design. Are you sure you want to do this and not simply pass a reference?

Yep sorry that is exactly what I wanted to do, I missed the obvious and made it complicated.

[JosAH]

Yep sorry that is exactly what I wanted to do, I missed the obvious and made it complicated.

The way I would do it is define a 'View' interface:

public interface View {
   public void display(Data data); // whatever Data may be
   // more methods here ...
}

All view implementations would implement this interface; when I really go fancy I define a ViewFactory that gives my a View given an ID or whatever:

public abstract class ViewFactory {
   public static View createView(ID id) { ... }
}

Note that this class is abstract and just contains a static method that gives me the View I want; there is no need for more fancy patterns such as abstract factories etc.

Anything that needs a View can consult the ViewFactory and voila.

kind regards,

Jos