Question about some code of mine

[Tom Patrick]

I am working on an application where I have a frame with a menu bar. In a menu called File I have an open command that opens a file dialog box. This is how I coded it, I made a global object of the class and made it static so that I could pass that as the parent frame to the file dialog constructor. It just seems like it might not be the proper way to do it, any suggestions?

public class VinlarMap extends Frame {
    static VinlarMap app;
    public VinlarMap() {
        //Sets up frame and displays window    
    }
    
    public static void main(String args[]) {
        app = new VinlarMap();}
    
    void setup() {
        setupMenuBars();
    }
    
    void setupMenuBars() {
        //Setups menu bar with a single menu with 2 choices, Open and Exit
    }
    
    class WindowEventHandler extends WindowAdapter {
        //Handles exit
    }
    
    class MenuItemHandler implements ActionListener {
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ev) {
    String s = ev.getActionCommand();
            if(s.equals("Exit")) {
                System.exit(0);
            } else {
                FileDialog fd = new FileDialog(app, "File Dialog");
                fd.setVisible(true);
            }
}
    }
}

[Manfred Leonhardt]

Hi Tom,
I think FileDialog should be made modal. If that is the case then you should use fd.show() instead of fd.setVisible( true ). This will block on the statement until the user has chosen a file or cancelled the dialog. Then you can just get the chosen file and call some local method in the calling class.
Regards,
Manfred.