Generic solution to deselect buttons in java

Question

In a set of radio buttons of the same group, only one can be selected at the same time. I would like to have the same behaviour with a normal button.

Imagine there's a row of 3 buttons. When a button is selected it changes: but.setSelected(true) and the other two buttons should be NOT selected: but.setSelected(false)

Now, is there a generic, simple and clean solution to accomplish that in Java (Swing) ?

Answer 1

JButton extends AbstractButton (in the same way JRadioButton does) and hence you can use the same solution as with JRadioButton: Simply add a number of JButtons to a ButtonGroup.

However, typically this approach will be unintuitive to the end user as people don't generally expect buttons to remain "stuck down"; This is specifically why JRadioButtons exist.

Answer 2

The is a special component for that - JToggleButton. It is exactly what you want. It can be used with ButtonGroup as radio buttons and check boxes (they are descendants of toggle button)