Java read and save GUI elements

Question

I have a question regarding accessing GUI elements. For example having a simple GUI program on Java, how can I read and save the Swing GUI elements hierarchy on a tree (ex. including main window, frames, button, textfield, combobox etc.).

Answer 1

Swing applications are already organized in trees. The JFrame is the root, children can be visited by:

Component[] components1 = mFrame.getContentPane().getComponents();

Every components has sub-components that you can get by:

// Assuming component is a container
((Container)component).getComponents(); 

Saving these elements into a file is an easy operation. Here is a good article to get you strated.

EDIT The beauty of streams is that you can use a file just as you would use a socket :) Thus turning ComponentSerializer component to serialize into a file instead of a socket requires 0 changes :)

Say your have a JFrame you want to save/read to/from a file, you do the following:

OutputStream output = new FileOutputStream("FileName.bin");
JFrame myFrame = new JFrame();
ComponentSerializer serializer = new ComponentSerializer();
serializer.write(myFrame, output);

// Reading from file
InputStream in = new FileInputStream("FileName.bin");
ComponentSerializer serializer = new ComponentSerializer();
JFrame myFrame = (JFrame) serializer.read(in);
myFrame.setVisible(true);