How to create a JButton with a menu?

Question

I want to create a Toolbar in my application. If you click a button on that toolbar, it will pop up a menu, just like in Eclipse's toolbar. I don't know how to do this in Swing. Can someone help me please? I've tried Google but found nothing.

Answer 1

This is way harder in Swing than it needs to be. So instead of pointing you to tutorials I've created a fully working example.

import javax.swing.*; import java.awt.*; import java.awt.event.ActionEvent; import java.awt.event.MouseAdapter; import java.awt.event.MouseEvent;  public class ToolbarDemo {      public static void main(String[] args) {         final JFrame frame = new JFrame();         frame.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(600, 400));         final JToolBar toolBar = new JToolBar();          //Create the popup menu.         final JPopupMenu popup = new JPopupMenu();         popup.add(new JMenuItem(new AbstractAction("Option 1") {             public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {                 JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(frame, "Option 1 selected");             }         }));         popup.add(new JMenuItem(new AbstractAction("Option 2") {             public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {                 JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(frame, "Option 2 selected");             }         }));          final JButton button = new JButton("Options");         button.addMouseListener(new MouseAdapter() {             public void mousePressed(MouseEvent e) {                 popup.show(e.getComponent(), e.getX(), e.getY());             }         });         toolBar.add(button);          frame.getContentPane().add(toolBar, BorderLayout.NORTH);         frame.pack();         frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);         frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);         frame.setVisible(true);     } } 

Answer 2

I don't see why this is harder than it needs to be or why you should use a MouseListener. The solution by Steve McLeod works, but where the menu appears depends on where the mouse was clicked. Why not just use an ActionListener as normally used for a JButton. It seems neither harder nor less hard.

final JPopupMenu menu = new JPopupMenu(); menu.add(...whatever...);  final JButton button = new JButton(); button.setText("My Menu"); button.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {     public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ev) {         menu.show(button, button.getBounds().x, button.getBounds().y            + button.getBounds().height);     } }); 

This positions the menu about the same as a menu in a JMenuBar for me, and the position is consistent. You could place it differently by modifying the x and y in menu.show().