how to get the row and column of a component

[truant420]

I am using gridlayout to display a 9x9 grid of jbuttons and jlabels, representing a futoshiki puzzle (thanks Fubarable). When you click a button it changes values from 0 to 5. I have another class (Futoshiki) that holds all the data of the puzzle and the GUI class is responsible only for displaying that data. Upon clicking a button at a specific row and column i want to set the value of the same cell in the Futoshiki class to the whatever text is in the button. I know i can do this by writing a separate listener class for each button and set the row and the column manually(as in the code below) but i was wondering if there is a more efficient way of doing this. Is it possible to get the row and the column of a specific component(button) and return it as an int value that can be passed on to another method?
Here is my code:
the button

panelGrid.setLayout(new GridLayout(0, 9));
        JButton b00 = new JButton("  ");
        ActionListener ac = new Counter(b00);
        b00.addActionListener(new Counter(b00));
        panelGrid.add(b00);

The listener class

public class Counter implements ActionListener
    {
        private int count;
        private JButton button;
        private int row;
        private int col;
        
        public Counter(JButton b)
        {
            button = b;
           // here i am doing this manually 
            row = 0;
            col = 0;
        }
        public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
        {
            count++;
            if (count > 5) {
                count = 0;
            }
            button.setText(""+count);
            Futoshiki f = new Futoshiki();
            Futoshiki.setSquare(row, col, count);
            System.out.println("CLICKED "+count+" TIMES");
            
        }
    }

The setSquare method

 public static void setSquare(int row, int column, int val)
    {
        squares[row][column] = new FilledSquare(val);      
    }

Thank you in advance for your time.

[Fubarable]

One possible way to do this (and I'm not sure how kosher this is), is to set the actionCommand String of the button with the two numbers, perhaps separated by a space. Then this can simply be extracted in the actionPerformed method by calling getActionCommand on the ActionEvent object that is passed into the method parameter. Another way is to get the JButton that has been pushed via the getSource method of ActionEvent, and loop through all of the buttons until the pressed button has been reached.

[truant420]

so getting the row and column as separate ints is not possible?
Also do you mind explaining the second way a bit more because I'm not sure i understand how it's supposed to help? If it's obvious, please don't judge me, it's a real mess in my head right now

[Fubarable]

so getting the row and column as separate ints is not possible?

I didn't say that, and yes they can be obtained as separate ints.

Also do you mind explaining the second way a bit more because I'm not sure i understand how it's supposed to help? If it's obvious, please don't judge me, it's a real mess in my head right now

You loop through all your buttons in nested for loops. When you find a button that equals the current button, the indices of the for loop will be your button's row and column.

[truant420]

I didn't say that, and yes they can be obtained as separate ints.

Well if i could do that all i need to do i pass these ints as the setSquare's parameters for row and column and that would solve my problem...right :confused: The thing is i don't know how to obtain them and i couldn't find a way in the api library (might have missed something, although i checked several times).

[Fubarable]

Well if i could do that all i need to do i pass these ints as the setSquare's parameters for row and column and that would solve my problem...right :confused: The thing is i don't know how to obtain them and i couldn't find a way in the api library (might have missed something, although i checked several times).

I understand, that's why I gave you two suggestions that you could use to get them.

[truant420]

oh i see now. i was thinking of a direct method like getRow/getColumn or something like that. Thank you for the time, Fubarable :)

[truant420]

ok i am ashamed to admit but i don't know how to construct my loops :S this is what i came up with and needless to say it doesn't work

public class Counter implements ActionListener
    {
        private int count;
        private JButton button;
        private int row;
        private int col;
        
        public Counter(JButton b)
        {
            button = b;

        }
        public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
        {
            count++;
            if (count > 5) {
                count = 0;
            }
            button.setText(""+count);
            button = (JButton) e.getSource();
            for (int row = 0; row < 10; row++) {
                for (int col = 0; col<10; col++){
                    JButton b = (JButton) e.getSource();
                       if (button.equals(b)) {
                       Futoshiki f = new Futoshiki();
                       Futoshiki.setSquare(row, col, count);
                    }
                }
            }
                
            
            System.out.println("CLICKED "+count+" TIMES");
        
        }
    }

please help me ;/

[Fubarable]

If you wanted to do this by the loop method, and your ActionListener is in a separate and distinct class from your GUI, then one way to do this is to have this method in the GUI section of the code, not the ActionListener class.

So your GUI could have a method like so:

   /**
    * @param buttonPressed
    * @return int[] where [0] holds row and [1] holds column number
    * or returns {-1, -1} if error
    */

   public int[] getRowCol(JButton buttonPressed) {
      int[] result = {-1, -1};

      // assuming that the buttons are held in a 2-dimensional array called buttons
      for (int row = 0; row < buttons.length; row++) {
         for (int col = 0; col < buttons[row].length; col++) {
            if (buttons[row][col] == buttonPressed) {
               result[0] = row;
               result[1] = col;
               return result;
            }
         }
      }
      return result;
   }

And your Listener would get a reference to the GUI via a parameter to its constructor (assuming that you want one listener object to be used on all the buttons).

Then in the Listener, again you'd get a reference to the button pressed via the ActionEvent's getSource method, and you'd call the gui's method above passing in this reference.

[truant420]

thank you Fubarable, you helped me again :)

[DarrylBurke]

Cross posted verbatim at
how to get the row and column of a component gridlayout

They must be scratching their heads there trying to figure out who Fubarable might be.

db