Java, Swing, getting and changing all input fields

Question

I'm coding an option's pannel, and to be able to add more options faster while I develop the application, I've decided to get all the input's components's in a Frame, I need to load their values from the config and set the corresponding text but it seems that it can't grab the component's text from the field. I'm getting a:
Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-0" java.lang.RuntimeException: Uncompilable source code - Erroneous sym type: java.awt.Component.setText
Nombre: server Clase:class javax.swing.JTextField

private void loadConfigs() {
    List<Component>  compList = getAllComponents(this);
    System.out.println("Tamaño "+compList.size());
    for(int i=0; i<compList.size();i++) {
       if(compList.get(i).getName() != null) {
           System.out.println("Nombre: "+compList.get(i).getName() +" Clase:"+ compList.get(i).getClass().toString());
           if(compList.get(i).getClass().toString().matches("class javax.swing.JTextField")) {
               System.out.println("Machea load " +compList.get(i).getName() + compList.get(i).toString());
               compList.get(i).setText(rootFrame.config.get(compList.get(i).getName()));
           }
           else if(compList.get(i).getClass().toString().matches("class javax.swing.JCheckBox")) {
                if (rootFrame.config.get(compList.get(i).getName()) == null) {
                    compList.get(i).setSelected(false);
                }
                else {
                    compList.get(i).setSelected(true);
                }
           }
       }
    }
}
public static List<Component> getAllComponents(final Container c) {
    Component[] comps = c.getComponents();
    List<Component> compList = new ArrayList<Component>();
    for (Component comp : comps) {
        compList.add(comp);
        if (comp instanceof Container) {
            compList.addAll(getAllComponents((Container) comp));
        }
    }
    return compList;
}

Answer 1

Here:

compList.get(i).setText(....)

The compiler only sees compList.get(i) as a Component. To use JTextField methods you must first cast this as a JTextField.

((JTextField)compList.get(i)).setText(....)

Your plan here seems to me to be kludgy and very non-OOPs compliant though.

Perhaps you want to create a Map<String, JTextField> and give the class a public method to get the Strings held by the text fields associated with the String that represents what the JTextField represents.

Answer 2

You should be using something like this:

if(compList.get(i) instanceof JTextField) {
    JTextField field = (JTextField) compList.get(i);
    field.getText(); // etc
}

instead of the getClass().toString checks you've been doing.