Obtaining focus on a JPanel

Question

I have a JPanel inside a JFrame. I have registered a KeyListener, based on which I want to update the JPanel. The problem I am having is that I cannot get the focus on the JPanel and therefore my KeyListener won't work. I already know that the KeyListener is functional because I registered it with the JFrame and it worked fine. My code goes something like this at the moment:

myFrame.setFocusable(false);
myPanel.setFocusable(true);
myPanel.addKeyListener(myKL);
myFrame.add(myPanel);

Has anyone encountered a problem like this before? Is there something I am missing in regards to this?

P.S.: I do not have any components inside the JPanel I just draw an Image on the background, so I need the focus to be on the JPanel itself and not on something inside it.

Answer 1

Although you're indicating that the panel can be focusable, the panel isn't asking for focus. Try using myPanel.requestFocus();.

Answer 2

Use setFocusable(true) and then requestFocusInWindow(). But the latter must be done after the window containing the panel is made visible, for which you will likely need to register a window listener and do the requestFocusInWindow() in the window activated handler code.

Note: Specifically after the window is visible, not just after calling setVisible(true).