Start a game from within an action listener

Question

I have a Blackjack game that I've made in Java and I want to signal the start of the game by clicking a button. All my action listeners work just fine and all that, but the problem lies in that I can't figure out how to start the game without it running completely within the actionPerformed method. Obviously, a function continuously running within the actionPerformed method will effectively disable the rest of my GUI. Here's a code snippet....

go.addActionListener(new ActionListener()
    {
        public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
        {
                 // START GAME SOMEHOW but must run outside of action listener
        }
    });

Answer 1

Obviously, a function continuously running within the actionPerformed method will effectively disable the rest of my GUI.

This is a valid observation and shows that you have understand the fundamental rule when working with Swing.

Your game is most likely event driven (correct me if I'm wrong) so the action performed by the button should just set the program in a new state, waiting for further events. This is nothing that should be time consuming, and is typically done directly by the EDT.

Of course, if you want to do a fancy start-new-game animation, that needs to be performed in a separate thread, in which case you simply start the animation thread (I would recommend using a SwingWorker though) from within the actionPerformed method, and then return.

In code, I imagine it would look something like this:

go.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {

        // Remove the menu components
        someJPanel.removeAll();

        // Show the game table
        someJPanel.add(new GamePanel());

        someJPanel.revalidate();
        someJPanel.repaint();

        // done. Wait for further user actions.
    }
});

Answer 2

You game should probably start in its own thread and manage that itself (hard to say), but to get you going you could start your game in a new "external" thread, something like this in your actionPerformed:

public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
    Thread thread = new Thread("Game thread") {
        public void run() {
            startGame(); //or however you start your game
        }
    };
    thread.start();
}