Gui Event Wrapper

[CategoryPattern]

I'm not a pattern guru. This probably isn't even a pattern, or may have a more generic form. But I've found it useful... please edit.

Context

Java GUI event handling.

Applicability

Java programs whose GUI needs to perform the same actions for many events.

Problem

Java's GUI events are sent to directly to EventListeners? that are scattered throughout your code. There's no way to install generic code that is called before and after every EventListener?, but you want a generic exception handler or other code to wrap every event.

Forces

• You want your program to display an UnexpectedErrorDialog? when an UncheckedException is thrown.
• Most events could possibly take a long time, and you want to display a WaitCursor? on every one.
• You have code that is duplicated in all EventListeners? and you want to eliminate that duplication.

Solution

Create a generic EventHandler class to be called from within your EventListeners?. It's best described by example: Here, we install an UnexpectedErrorDialog?.

 public class ExampleGui? {...
   public ExampleGui?() {
     ...
     exampleButton.addActionListener(new ActionListener(ActionEvent e) {
       EventHandler.doEvent(new EventHandler() {
         public void eventBody() {
           // regular event handling code goes here
         }
       })
     });
     ...
   }
   ...
 }

 public class EventHandler {
   static void doEvent(EventHandler handler) {
     try {
       handler.eventBody();
     } catch (RuntimeException e) {
       (new UnexpectedErrorDialog?()).show();
     }
   }
   public abstract void eventBody();
 }

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From the problem statement: "Java's GUI events are sent to directly to EventListeners? that are scattered throughout your code. There's no way to install generic code that is called before and after every EventListener?, but you want a generic exception handler or other code to wrap every event."

Actually, GUI events are not sent directly to EventListeners?. They are first placed on a platform-independent EventQueue that dispatches them to the processEvent method of the appropriate AWT component, which dispatches each event to an event-specific processNnnnn method (e.g. processMouseEvent), which then notifies any registered event listeners. Event processing can be overridden at any point in that process.

To install generic code that is invoked before/after every event, you can install a custom EventQueue that performs some processing on the events as they are queued or dispatched.

See the documentation for java.awt.EventQueue for more details.

--NatPryce

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CategoryUserInterface