Java MouseListener

Question

I have a bunch of JLabels and i would like to trap mouse click events. at the moment i am having to use:

public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent arg0) {

}

public void mouseExited(MouseEvent arg0) {

}

public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent arg0) {

}

public void mousePressed(MouseEvent arg0) {

}

public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent arg0) {

    System.out.println("Welcome to Java Programming!"); 
}

I was wondering if there is a tidier way of doing this instead of having a bunch of events I do not wish trap?

EDIT:

    class MyAdapter extends MouseAdapter {
    public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent event) {

        System.out.println(event.getComponent());
    }
}

the above works but netBeans says add @override anotation. what does this mean?

EDIT: ok got it. fixed and solved.

Answer 1

Use MouseAdapter()

An abstract adapter class for receiving mouse events. The methods in this class are empty. This class exists as convenience for creating listener objects. So you need to implement only the method you like such as following example:

import java.awt.event.MouseAdapter;
import java.awt.event.MouseEvent;

import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JPanel;

public class MainClass extends JPanel {

  public MainClass() {

      addMouseListener(new MouseAdapter() { 
          public void mousePressed(MouseEvent me) { 
            System.out.println(me); 
          } 
        }); 

  }

  public static void main(String[] args) {
    JFrame frame = new JFrame();
    frame.getContentPane().add(new MainClass());

    frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);

    frame.setSize(200, 200);
    frame.setVisible(true);
  }
}

Answer 2

One could use a MouseAdapter class, which implements the MouseListener interface, so one does not need to implement all the methods.

However, by overriding the methods of interest, one can get the desired behavior. For example, if one overrides the mouseClicked method, then one can define some behavior for the mouse click event.

For example (untested code):

JLabel label = new JLabel("Hello");

label.addMouseListener(new MouseAdapter() {
    public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e) {
        System.out.println("Clicked!");
    }
});

In the code above, the JLabel will print "Clicked!" to the console upon being clicked on.

Answer 3

You can extend MouseAdapter instead, and just override the events you're really interested in.