Detect enter press in JTextField

Question

Is it possible to detect when someone presses Enter while typing in a JTextField in java? Without having to create a button and set it as the default.

Answer 1

A JTextField was designed to use an ActionListener just like a JButton is. See the addActionListener() method of JTextField.

For example:

Action action = new AbstractAction() {     @Override     public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)     {         System.out.println("some action");     } };  JTextField textField = new JTextField(10); textField.addActionListener( action ); 

Now the event is fired when the Enter key is used.

Also, an added benefit is that you can share the listener with a button even if you don't want to make the button a default button.

JButton button = new JButton("Do Something"); button.addActionListener( action ); 

Note, this example uses an Action, which implements ActionListener because Action is a newer API with addition features. For example you could disable the Action which would disable the event for both the text field and the button.