how to reuse the area in a container when any component is removed from it?

Question

hi! i hav a panel and i m trying to remove labels from it which were added to it during run-time. but when labels are removed succesfully i m not able to use the space,left by that label,again to add any label to it.

thanks in anticipation of the solution.

here is the relevant code snippet:

1. to add label to the panel:

   JLabel jl = new JLabel();
   jl.setOpaque(true);
   jl.setIcon(new ImageIcon("D:/Project/router2.jpg"));
   jl.setBounds(x, y, jl.getPreferredSize().width,
       jl.getPreferredSize().height);
   for (Component c : lcomponent) {
       flag = true;
       Rectangle r4 = c.getBounds();
       int x1 = (int) r4.getX();
       int y1 = (int) r4.getY();
       Rectangle r5 = new Rectangle(
           new Point(x1 - 60, y1 - 60), new Dimension(170, 170));
       if (r5.contains(p)) { //To ensure that two labels do not overlap
           flag = false;     //or are too close to each other
           break;
       }
   }
   if (flag) {
       p2.add(jl); //p2 is a panel
       Component c2 = p2.getComponentAt(x, y);
       p2.repaint();
       lcomponent.add(c2); //lcomponent is an ArrayList<Component> to
                           //store all the labels added to the panel
   }
   

2. to remove the label:

   p2.remove(<label name>);
   p2.repaint();
   

i hav tried revalidate() also but i dont know why it automatically aligns the components in a row at the top.

help me with this also

Answer 1

Call Container.invalidate()

Answer 2

After adding/removing components from a visible frame you should use:

//panel.add(...);
panel.remove(...);
panel.revalidate();
panel.repaint();

Answer 3

hi!!!

i think i got the answer.actually while removing the component,i was removing it from the panel but not from the arraylists(lcomponent and label above) because of which i was not able to use that area again to put any other component.removing the entry from lists worked for me.