Scrollbars on JTextArea in a JScrollPane do not work

Question

I'm having trouble getting a JTextArea to scroll. I'm not sure how you can mess up a JScrollPane but I seem to have and I just can't see it. It's all part of a larger project but the code below is how I'm creating a JTextArea and adding it to a JScrollPane. When you type beyond the edge of the text area the scrollbar doesn't appear. Setting the vertical scrollbar to always on gives a scrollbar that doesn't do anything.

import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;

public class TextAreaTest extends JFrame{

    public TextAreaTest() {
     super("Text Area Scroller");

     Container c = getContentPane();

     JTextArea textarea = new JTextArea();
     textarea.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(300, 50));
     textarea.setLineWrap(true);
     textarea.setText("xx\nxx\nxx\nxx\nxx\nxx\nxx\nxx\nxx\nxx\nxx\nxx\nxx\nxx\n");

     JScrollPane scroller = new JScrollPane(textarea);

     c.add(scroller, BorderLayout.CENTER);
     pack();
     setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
    }

    public static void main(String args[]){
     TextAreaTest instance = new TextAreaTest();
     instance.setVisible(true);
    }
}

I've tried setting the text area text, or rows and columns, in the constructor, neither of which worked. It's doing my head in. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Set the preferred size of the scroll pane rather than the text area.

Answer 2

The others are right about the size. As an aside, consider starting on the Event Dispatch Thread (EDT):

public static void main(String args[]) {
    EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable() {

        @Override
        public void run() {
            new TextAreaTest().setVisible(true);
        }
    });
}