repainting multiple JPanel from a single "control" panel - multithreading

Question

so i'm trying to set up an application where i have multiple panels inside a jframe. lets say 3 of them are purely for display purposes, and one of them is for control purposes. i'm using a borderLayout but i don't think the layout should really affect things here.
my problem is this: i want the repainting of the three display panels to be under the control of buttons in the control panel, and i want them to all execute in sync whenever a button on the control panel is pressed. to do this, i set up this little method :
public void update(){
while(ButtonIsOn){
a.repaint();
b.repaint()
c.repaint();
System.out.println("a,b, and c should have repainted");
}
}
where a,b, and c are all display panels and i want a,b,and c to all repaint continously until i press the button again. the problem is, when i execute the loop, the message prints in an infinite loop, but none of the panels do anything, ie, none of them repaint.
i've been reading up on the event dispatch thread and swing multithreading, but nothing i've found so far has really solved my problem. could someone give me the gist of what i'm doing wrong here, or even better, some sample code that handles the situation i'm describing? thanks...

Answer 1

The java.util.concurrent package provides very powerful tools for concurrent programing.
In the code below, I make use of a ReentrantLock (which works much like the Java synchronized keyword, ensuring mutually exclusive access by multiple threads to a single block of code). The other great thing which ReentrantLock provides are Conditions, which allow Threads to wait for a particular event before continuing.
Here, RepaintManager simply loops, calling repaint() on the JPanel. However, when toggleRepaintMode() is called, it blocks, waiting on the modeChanged Condition until toggleRepaintMode() is called again.
You should be able to run the following code right out of the box. Pressing the JButton toggle repainting of the JPanel (which you can see working by the System.out.println statements).
In general, I'd highly recommend getting familiar with the capabilities that java.util.concurrent offers. There's lots of very powerful stuff there. There's a good tutorial at http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/concurrency/
import java.awt.Component;
import java.awt.Graphics;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import java.util.Collection;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.concurrent.locks.Condition;
import java.util.concurrent.locks.ReentrantLock;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
public class RepaintTest {
public static void main(String[] args) {
JFrame frame = new JFrame();
JPanel panel = new JPanel()
{
#Override
public void paintComponent( Graphics g )
{
super.paintComponent( g );
// print something when the JPanel repaints
// so that we know things are working
System.out.println( "repainting" );
}
};
frame.add( panel );
final JButton button = new JButton("Button");
panel.add(button);
// create and start an instance of our custom
// RepaintThread, defined below
final RepaintThread thread = new RepaintThread( Collections.singletonList( panel ) );
thread.start();
// add an ActionListener to the JButton
// which turns on and off the RepaintThread
button.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
#Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent arg0) {
thread.toggleRepaintMode();
}
});
frame.setSize( 300, 300 );
frame.setVisible( true );
}
public static class RepaintThread extends Thread
{
ReentrantLock lock;
Condition modeChanged;
boolean repaintMode;
Collection<? extends Component> list;
public RepaintThread( Collection<? extends Component> list )
{
this.lock = new ReentrantLock( );
this.modeChanged = this.lock.newCondition();
this.repaintMode = false;
this.list = list;
}
#Override
public void run( )
{
while( true )
{
lock.lock();
try
{
// if repaintMode is false, wait until
// Condition.signal( ) is called
while ( !repaintMode )
try { modeChanged.await(); } catch (InterruptedException e) { }
}
finally
{
lock.unlock();
}
// call repaint on all the Components
// we're not on the event dispatch thread, but
// repaint() is safe to call from any thread
for ( Component c : list ) c.repaint();
// wait a bit
try { Thread.sleep( 50 ); } catch (InterruptedException e) { }
}
}
public void toggleRepaintMode( )
{
lock.lock();
try
{
// update the repaint mode and notify anyone
// awaiting on the Condition that repaintMode has changed
this.repaintMode = !this.repaintMode;
this.modeChanged.signalAll();
}
finally
{
lock.unlock();
}
}
}
}

Answer 2

jComponent.getTopLevelAncestor().repaint();

Answer 3

You could use SwingWorker for this. SwingWorker was designed to perform long running tasks in the background without blocking the event dispatcher thread. So, you need to extend SwingWorker and implement certain methods that will make sense to you. Note that all long running action should happen in the doInBackground() method, and the Swing UI elements should be updated only on the done() method.
So here is an example :
class JPanelTask extends SwingWorker<String, Object>{
JPanel panel = null;
Color bg = null;
public JPanelTask(JPanel panel){
this.panel = panel;
}
#Override
protected String doInBackground() throws Exception {
//loooong running computation.
return "COMPLETE";
}
#Override
protected void done() {
panel.repaint();
}
}
Now, in your "control" button's action performed event, you could do the following :
controlButton.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
#Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent arg0) {
JPanelTask task1 = new JPanelTask(panel1);
task1.execute();
JPanelTask task2 = new JPanelTask(panel2);
task2.execute();
//so on..
}
});
Another way is using javax.swing.Timer. Timer helps you to fire a change to your ui elements in a timely fasthion.This may not be the most appropriate solution. But it gets the work done too.
Again you should be careful about updating UI elements in right places.