JAVA Swing GUI tips and howtos.

This example shows how to use a single filechooser to open and save. The filechooser will remember the directory it entered last which makes it a lot easier for the user. openFile and saveFile can be buttons or menu items with an ActionListener.

public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event) { Object source = event.getSource(); if (source == openFile) { if (fileChooser.showOpenDialog(this) == JFileChooser.APPROVE_OPTION) { try { File file = fileChooser.getSelectedFile(); //get file(path+name) BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader (new FileReader(file)); //in.readLine() etc } catch (Exception e) { //ignore... } } else { //user cancelled... } } else if (source == saveFile) { if (fileChooser.showSaveDialog(this) == JFileChooser.APPROVE_OPTION) { try { File file = fileChooser.getSelectedFile(); PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(file); //out.print() etc out.close(); } catch (Exception e) { //ignore... } } else { //user cancelled... } }

Create the JPopupMenu and add JMenuItems to it (and ActionListeners to the items) like a normal JMenu. But instead of adding it to a menubar, wrap it in a class that implements MouseAdapter, and use addMouseListener() to add the listener to the item to popup over:

rightClickMeComponent.addMouseListener(new PopupListener(popupMenu))

You create the PopupListener class - it needs to call popupMenu.show() to show the popup when the events are right. This sample PopupListener is a slightly modified version of the one from The Java Tutorial:

public class PopupListener extends MouseAdapter { JPopupMenu popup; PopupListener(JPopupMenu popupMenu) { popup = popupMenu; } public void mousePressed(MouseEvent e) { if (e.isPopupTrigger()) popup.show(e.getComponent(), e.getX(), e.getY()); } public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent e) { if (e.isPopupTrigger()) popup.show(e.getComponent(), e.getX(), e.getY()); } }