Lesson: Writing Event Listeners

This lesson gives you details about writing event listeners. You might not need to read this section. Your first source of information for event should be the how-to section for the component in question. You can find the appropriate section using the A Visual Guide to Swing Components (Java Look and Feel). Each component's section shows code for handling the events most commonly needed when implementing the component. For example, How to Use Check Boxes shows you how to handle mouse clicks on check boxes using an item listener.

Some Simple Event-Handling Examples

The programs in this section illustrate events and event handling.

General Information about Writing Event Listeners

This section provides information that is useful for handling all types of events. One of the topics includes information on using adapters and inner classes to implement event handlers.

Listeners Supported by Swing Components

This is the place to find out which Swing components can fire which kinds of events. You might want to bookmark this section so you can easily find its quick-reference table.

Implementing Listeners for Commonly Handled Events

This section has detailed information and examples of writing each common kind of event listener.

Listener API Table

This section features a quick-reference table that shows each listener, its adapter class (if any), and its methods.

Solving Common Event-Handling Problems

If you are having some hard-to-debug problems related to handling events, you might find the solution here.

Questions and Exercises

Try these questions and exercises to test what you have learned in this lesson.

If you are interested in using JavaFX to create your GUI, see Handling JavaFX Events.