calling an object method from another object

[manudude03]

Hi everyone, first post here :)

I've been trying to learn Java for the last 36 hours or so (after applying for a HTML/CSS job saying "Java knowledge preferred"), and decided to experiment a bit making a graphical tic-tac-toe game. I eventually managed to get that done and it's working. Working code below:

[Java] tic tac toe 1 - Pastebin.com (Sorry for using pastebin rather than the code function here, this site timed out on me twice trying to submit it).

So, it works to an extent, however, the way I am capturing which cell is selected seems very sloppy, and would not work if the cells weren't squares or rectangles. So I made a copy of the project and restructured it adding the mouse event to the cells, but now I can't get JComponent to repaint. New code below:

tic tac toe 2 - Pastebin.com

Apologies for this post being so long (if you include the code in the links :P), but I've been stuck on this for a couple of hours now and I'm out of ideas :(.
Curiously, clicking triggers the action for all 9 cells, but I presume it's because I haven't bounded them making it think I've clicked all 9 simultaneously.
What I've tried:
Make the Cell class extend the game class and call this.repaint()- causes stack overflow.
Calling Game.GameState() within the cell clicking event and making that function static - compiler doesn't like calling repaint() inside a static function.
Making another class to make a clone of the Game object and then refresh- was never going to work....
A couple of other things I can't remember...

[Norm]

If you have code you have questions about, please post it here with your questions.

[manudude03]

Let's try a shorter version (the full code is in the second link):

I have 2 classes in question, game.java (which is extended from another class which handles the gui) and cell.java. The game class contains an array of 9 cells.

In the game class, I have this method:

public void GameState()
	{
		// standard iterator
		int i=0;
		// WinCombos is a 2D array showing the 8 possible ways of winning
		int[][] WinCombos= {{0,1,2},{3,4,5},{6,7,8},{0,3,6},{1,4,7},{2,3,8},{0,4,8},{2,4,6}};
		// iterate through the above array
		for (i=0; i<8; i++)
		{
			// these 2 if statements should be combined, but this way leads to shorter lines
			if (Game.cells[WinCombos[i][0]].getContent()==Game.cells[WinCombos[i][1]].getContent())
			{
				if (Game.cells[WinCombos[i][0]].getContent()==Game.cells[WinCombos[i][2]].getContent())
				{
					// if it's got in here, then one of the winning combos has happened, check who won
					if (Game.cells[WinCombos[i][0]].getContent()=="X")
					{
						Game.status="Player X wins";
						Game.state=1;
						this.repaint();
						return;
					}
					if (Game.cells[WinCombos[i][0]].getContent()=="O")
					{
						Game.status="Player O wins";
						Game.state=2;
						this.repaint();
						return;
					}
				}
			}
		}
		// if no-one has won, is the game still ongoing?
		for (i=0; i<9; i++)
		{
			if (Game.cells[i].getContent()=="")
			{	
				Game.status="Player "+Game.move+"'s turn";
				Game.state=0; // game still in progress
				this.repaint();
				return;
			}
		}
		Game.status="Draw";
		Game.state=3;
		this.repaint();
		return; // game drawn
	}

And in the cell.java class, I have this mouse event listener (updated from the link so only gets in to the meat of the function once- similar to how I originally did it):

	public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e) {
		// TODO Auto-generated method stub
		double cx, cy; // the event x and y
		cx=e.getX();
		cy=e.getY();
                // check if click was inside perimeter of cell
		if (cx>this.getxlower()&&cx<this.getxupper()&&cy>this.getylower()&&cy<this.getyupper())
		{
			System.out.println("Cell "+this.id+" clicked");
			if (this.getContent()!="")
			{
				this.setContent(Game.move);
				Game.cells[this.id].setContent(Game.move); 
				if (Game.move=="X")
				{
					Game.move="O";
				}
				else
				{
					Game.move="X";
				}

                               // call to Game.GameState() needed here
			}
		}
	}

I need to call Game.GameState() from within the cell class (just after the listener has finished), how do I make the link?

[Norm]

Have a reference to the Game class at the class level so the code in the listener method can call its methods:

   refToGameClass.gameState(); // call method using reference to Game object

BTW The names in the code aren't standard. Class names begin with uppercase and variable and method names with lowercase

[manudude03]

My class names do start with a capital, I was just lazy when I was typing out the second post. The GameState method must have slipped through the cracks so to speak, but anyway it took a little tweaking to fix the gui, but your solution worked nicely, thanks :)