How to put a JButton inside a JTextField (Java)?

Question

I would like to have a JButton (with a folder icon image) inside a JTextField, like over on the far right of the JTextField, so that when clicked, the button opens up a JFileChooser, and when a file is selected, the path to the file appears inside the JTextField.

I have made this code, but nothing shows up.

public class TextFieldChooser extends JTextField {

    public ImageIcon folderIcon;
    public JButton btnFolder;

    public TextFieldChooser(int columns) {
        super(columns);
        btnFolder = new JButton();
        folderIcon = new ImageIcon(getClass().getResource("/resources/folder_find.png"));
        btnFolder.setIcon(folderIcon);
        this.add(btnFolder);

    }
}

Answer 1

You can't don't want to put a button in a text field. You need to break out your intent into several components - 3, in fact.

First you're going to need a parent container, or something that will contain both your text field and also the button; a JPanel should suffice.

Then you need your real components, and by real I mean the ones that actually do something. These are your JTextField and JButton - go ahead and add these to the JPanel. In order to add them and have them appear how you want (with the button in the corner), you're going to need to specify a layout for your JPanel. This layout will define where added components go (visually) inside the JPanel.

Now that you've added those things into your JPanel, you can work only with your JPanel instead of thinking in terms of the contained JTextField and JButton.

Answer 2

Building on what Shakedown suggested, I think you can get the desired effect relatively easily. What you do is have a JPanel that contains both the text area and, beside it, the button. Next, set the text field to not draw any borders and give the JPanel a bevel border. Now it will look like the button is inside the text area. It might take some fine tuning, but it should work.

Answer 3

You may find the Component Border helpfull. It allows you to display a button in the text field by using the Border API.