Working With Color Picker in Swing

Introduction

In this article, we describe how we can work with the color-chooser. The color chooser dialog box is a very general thing for GUI applications. Java provides a JColorChooser class with the Swing package. Use the JColorChooser class to enable users to choose from a palette of colors. A color chooser is a component that you can place anywhere within your GUI program. The JColorChooser API also makes it easy to bring up a dialog (modal or not) that contains a color-chooser.

For adding a color chooser to your application you have to follow some steps.

Step 1: Import the necessary package.

import javax.swing.JDialog;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JTextArea;
import java.awt.EventQueue;
import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.GridLayout;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import javax.swing.JColorChooser;

Step 2: Create a class and define the component variables.

public class ColorChooserDemo
{
JFrame myFrame;
JTextArea ta;
JPanel pnl;
Step 3: Create a GUI within the constructor.
public ColorChooserDemo()
{
myFrame = new JFrame();
// for handle the frame close operation
myFrame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
//set the title of frame
myFrame.setTitle("Color choosher Dialog box Example");
//Set the size
myFrame.setSize(500, 300);
myFrame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
myFrame.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
// creating TextArea
ta = new JTextArea("Your TextArea:");
ta.setVisible(true);
//Add text Area in frame
myFrame.add(ta, BorderLayout.NORTH);
// creating panel
pnl = new JPanel();
//pass the object of grid layout
pnl.setLayout(new GridLayout(1, 2));
myFrame.add(pnl, BorderLayout.SOUTH);
//creating A button
JButton showButton = new JButton("Show ColorChooser box");
showButton.setActionCommand("Show ColorChooser box");
//Performing event handling

Step 3: Perform event handling.

showButton.addActionListener(new ActionListener()
{
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event)
{
Color selectedColor = JColorChooser.showDialog(myFrame, "Pick a Color", Color.GREEN);
if (selectedColor != null)
{
ta.append("\nThe selected color is make up of Red: " + selectedColor.getRed() + " Blue: " + selectedColor.getBlue() + " Green: " + selectedColor.getGreen());
}
}
});
pnl.add(showButton);
JButton createButton = new JButton("Create Color");
createButton.setActionCommand("Create Color");
createButton.addActionListener(new ActionListener()
{
@Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event)
{
final JColorChooser colorChooser = new JColorChooser();
JDialog dialog = JColorChooser.createDialog(myFrame, "Chane TextArea color", false, colorChooser, new ActionListener()
{
@Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event)
{
ta.append("\n Now my color is changed to " + colorChooser.getColor());
ta.setBackground(colorChooser.getColor());
}
}
, new ActionListener()
{
@Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event)
{
ta.append("\nYou clicked on cancel..");
}
});
dialog.setVisible(true);
}
});
pnl.add(createButton);
myFrame.setVisible(true);
}

Step 4: All the GUI-related components are in the constructor.

Complete code

import javax.swing.JDialog;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JTextArea;
import java.awt.EventQueue;
import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.GridLayout;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import javax.swing.JColorChooser;
public class ColorChooserDemo {
JFrame myFrame;
JTextArea ta;
JPanel pnl;
public ColorChooserDemo() {
myFrame = new JFrame();
myFrame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
myFrame.setTitle("Dialog Box Example");
myFrame.setSize(500, 300);
myFrame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
myFrame.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
ta = new JTextArea("File ta:");
ta.setVisible(true);
myFrame.add(ta, BorderLayout.NORTH);
pnl = new JPanel();
pnl.setLayout(new GridLayout(1, 2));
myFrame.add(pnl, BorderLayout.SOUTH);
JButton showButton = new JButton("Show ColorChooser box");
showButton.setActionCommand("Show ColorChooser box");
showButton.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event) {
Color selectedColor = JColorChooser.showDialog(myFrame, "Pick a Color", Color.GREEN);
if (selectedColor != null) {
ta.append("\nThe selected color is make up of Red: " + selectedColor.getRed() + " Blue: " + selectedColor.getBlue() + " Green: " + selectedColor.getGreen());
}
}
});
pnl.add(showButton);
JButton createButton = new JButton("Create Color");
createButton.setActionCommand("Create Color");
createButton.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
@Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event) {
final JColorChooser colorChooser = new JColorChooser();
JDialog dialog = JColorChooser.createDialog(myFrame, "Chane TextArea color", false, colorChooser,
new ActionListener() {
@Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event) {
ta.append("\n Now my color is changed to " + colorChooser.getColor());
ta.setBackground(colorChooser.getColor());
}
}, new ActionListener() {
@Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event) {
ta.append("\nYou clicked on cancel..");
}
});
dialog.setVisible(true);
}
});
pnl.add(createButton);
myFrame.setVisible(true);
}
public static void main(String[] args)
{
EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable()
{
@Override
public void run()
{
new ColorChooserDemo();
}
});
}
}