Java Swing: Approach for dynamically appending text in text area, have scrollbar update

Question

What is the general approach with Java swing to update a textarea with lines of text (say from a Thread) and then have the text caret flow to the bottom of the textarea as text is being added. Also update the scrollbar so that it is at the bottom.

I was thinking that I would have a stringbuffer and append text to that and then set the string in the textarea and position the scrollbar at the bottom.

Answer 1

Use append() to add the text, then setCaretPosition() to make sure you scroll with it.

myTextPane.append(textFromSomewhere);
myTextPane.setCaretPosition(myTextPane.getDocument().getLength());

Answer 2

The append() method doesn't do what you want?

And although you didn't ask: when you're generating something in a background thread, be sure to use SwingUtilities.invokeLater() to update your components.