JButton onClick change color background

[behrk2]

Hey guys,

I have an array of six colors. I also have a button. What I want to do is, everytime the button is clicked, have its background color change to the next index of the array. Once the button has changed to all six colors, I want it to repeat.

Here is the code I have:

private void gboard_row1_btn1ActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) {
        Color colors[] = new Color[6];

        int i=0;
        
        colors[0] = Color.red;
        colors[1] = Color.orange;
        colors[2] = Color.yellow;
        colors[3] = Color.green;
        colors[4] = Color.blue;
        colors[5] = new Color(138, 43, 226);

    while( i<6 ) {
            gboard_row1_btn1.setBackground(colors[i]);
            i++;
    }
    }

My loop is screwed up and I don't know how I would go about implementing a solution for this. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!

[Eranga]

Do you know how to handle getSource() in ActionEvent.

evt.getSource()

The above line is quite similar to your code.

[behrk2]

Thanks for your help, with that information, I came up with this...

private void gboard_row1_btn1ActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) {
        
    Object source = evt.getSource();
    Color color = getBackground();
    if (source == new Color(255, 255, 255))
      color = Color.red;
    else if (source == Color.red)
      color = Color.orange;
    else if (source == Color.orange)
      color = Color.yellow;
    else if (source == Color.yellow)
      color = Color.green;
    else if (source == Color.green)
      color = Color.blue;
    else if (source == Color.blue)
      color = new Color(138, 43, 226);
    else if (source == new Color(138, 43, 226))
      color = Color.red;
    setBackground(color);
    repaint();

    }

But that still does not work. Any suggestions? I will keep trying to work with it and post if I come up with a solution

[Eranga]

You comes in wrong way. Handle the getSource() in wrong way.

[Eranga]

Here is a suggestion. randomly find a color and repaint the container with that selected color. Just think what happened in your loop. After action event is fired your loop executed. So...

And also you can do it in a thread. Set a color, and repaint. After certain time interval repeat the process.

[Michael Dunn]

why would you need a loop?

you (seemingly) have an actionListener tied to a button, so all you
need to do is have class fields for the color array and the counter,
then in gboard_row1_btn1ActionPerformed you have

gboard_row1_btn1.setBackground(colors[i % colors.length]);
i++;

[behrk2]

Thanks Michael,

That looks like a much better way. I got the same answer in another forum I had posted to as well...

A far better way to use the index is with the % operator.

. . . colors[index++ % colors.length] . . .

You can reduce the entire method to
code:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e){	
m_btn1.setBackground(colors[index++ % colors.length]);
}

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You might have problems when you have clicked 2147483647 times with arithmetical overflow, however. Try index++ and ++index, see which works better. You can divide it into 3 statements if you prefer:

index++;
index %= colors.length;
myButton.setBackground(colors[index]);

And colors is identical for all instances, so it could beneficially be a static field.

I will try it out!