how to place a JLabel and JTextField

[Christopher Laurenzano]

I'm working bit by bit on my contacts program, and am trying to figure out how to place a JLabel and a JTextField next to one another2 as well as place the field I want (Name, phone, address, etc) aligned to the left  Can anyone help?

Here's a screen shot so far.  The Field and label change being next to one another or on top depending on how small the window is reduced.

[Ron McLeod]

Are you using a Layout Manager?

[Christopher Laurenzano]

Yes I am -- it's flow layout, the default one for a JPanel.  I'm just still learning these things, and am still getting used to the API's.  My apologies if  my question is too obvious.  I take it that there's something in the layout Manager to do this, but I thought there might be other ways to put the components where I want them, rather than have the Layout Manager take care of it, if I'm saying that correctly.

[Rob Camick]

I take it that there's something in the layout Manager to do this

There are different layout managers, each designed to provide different layouts. You can also nest panels with different layout managers.

Read the tutorial and use the appropriate layout manager for your requirements.

Your verbal description is too vague for us to provide a complete suggestion.

[Paul Clapham]

I would strongly recommend reading Oracle's tutorial about layout managers -- in fact I see Campbell has already linked to it. Download the example code from the tutorial and start playing around with it, keeping your requirements in the back of your mind so you can notice what might work for you.

Also... I mostly use BoxLayout these days because it's more flexible than the Java 1.0 layout managers. But for complex layouts I still find myself trying to referee the battling layout managers and it can take a long time to bring order and predictability to the layout.

Back in the days when Swing still mattered there were people who tried to produce more useful layout managers, and there were several available on line. I still use DesignGridLayout because it's reasonably easy to produce layouts which it sounds like you're describing. You may still be able to track down the documentation and jar file for it, although it was written over a decade ago.

[Carey Brown]

For a form style layout I find nothing beats a Grid Bag Layout. The problem with it is  without any help it makes the code you have to write unmanageable and unreadable. There's a wrapper class called "GBC" to the rescue which it makes it totally manageable. You'd still want to read up on Grid Bag Layout so you have an idea of what the GBC class is doing for you. With this layout you can imagine you've got a piece of graph paper that you are plopping components on to. I've put together a small sample for you. And you can search for GBC on this  site and copy it.

import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.GridBagLayout;

import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JLabel;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.JTextField;

@SuppressWarnings("serial")
public class SwingGridBagForm
implements GBCConsts
{
	JTextField			name;
	JTextField			phone;
	JTextField			address;
	
	public static void main( String[] args )
	{
		new SwingGridBagForm();
	}
	
	public SwingGridBagForm()
	{
		java.awt.EventQueue.invokeLater( () -> run() );
	}
	
	public void run()
	{
		initComponents();
	}

	private void initComponents()
	{
		JFrame			frame = new JFrame();
		frame.setTitle( "SwingGridBagForm" );
		frame.setSize( 400, 400 );
		frame.setDefaultCloseOperation( JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE );

		JPanel			formPanel = new JPanel();
		GridBagLayout	formPanelLayout = new GridBagLayout();
		formPanel.setBackground( Color.YELLOW );
		
		// Specify the layout heights/widths & weights, leaving an extra
		// row and column that will expand to fill any unused space.
		formPanelLayout.rowWeights		= new double[]{ 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.1 };
		formPanelLayout.rowHeights		= new int[] { 7, 20, 7, 20, 7, 20, 7 };
		formPanelLayout.columnWeights	= new double[] { 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.1, 0.0 };
		formPanelLayout.columnWidths	= new int[] { 7, 20, 7, 20, 7 };

		formPanel.setLayout( formPanelLayout );
		frame.getContentPane().add( formPanel, BorderLayout.CENTER );
		
		formPanel.add( new JLabel("Name"), new GBC(1,1).setAnchor( WEST ) );
		formPanel.add( name = new JTextField(), new GBC(3,1).setFill( HORIZONTAL ).setAnchor( WEST ) );
		
		formPanel.add( new JLabel("Phone"), new GBC(1,3).setAnchor( WEST ) );
		formPanel.add( phone = new JTextField(), new GBC(3,3).setFill( HORIZONTAL ).setAnchor( WEST ) );
		
		formPanel.add( new JLabel("Address"), new GBC(1,5).setAnchor( WEST ) );
		formPanel.add( address = new JTextField(), new GBC(3,5).setFill( HORIZONTAL ).setAnchor( WEST ) );

		frame.setVisible( true );
	}
}

import java.awt.GridBagConstraints;

public interface GBCConsts
{
	public static int		NONE = GridBagConstraints.NONE;	
	public static int		HORIZONTAL = GridBagConstraints.HORIZONTAL;
	public static int		VERTICAL = GridBagConstraints.VERTICAL;
	public static int		BOTH = GridBagConstraints.BOTH;
	
	public static int		CENTER = GridBagConstraints.CENTER;
	public static int		NORTH = GridBagConstraints.NORTH;
	public static int		SOUTH = GridBagConstraints.SOUTH;
	public static int		EAST = GridBagConstraints.EAST;
	public static int		WEST = GridBagConstraints.WEST;
	public static int		NORTHEAST = GridBagConstraints.NORTHEAST;
	public static int		NORTHWEST = GridBagConstraints.NORTHWEST;
	public static int		SOUTHEAST = GridBagConstraints.SOUTHEAST;
	public static int		SOUTHWEST = GridBagConstraints.SOUTHWEST;
}

[Carey Brown]

Download GBC HERE

[Sot Nikele]

You have to use a layout manager.
If it's not a school or university project and you are allowed to use whatever layout manager you want, I recommend you to use MigLayout.
Very easy to use and very flexible.

https://www.miglayout.com/

[Tim Moores]

The https://coderanch.com/wiki/659817/Swing-FAQ links to a couple more alternatives, like GridLayout2 (basically GridLayout with variable row and column widths and heights - that was often sufficient for my purposes) and SGLayout.

[Piet Souris]

And if it is really complicated, you can always use a GUI-builder.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Paul Clapham wrote:. . . Campbell has already linked to it. . . .

Have I? I think that was somebody else: Ron.

Carey Brown wrote:. . . There's a wrapper class called "GBC" . . .

i like GBC; it was written by Cay Horstmann and I have written my own versions of Hortmann's class several times.

Piet Souris wrote:. . . you can always use a GUI-builder.

I prefer to restrict GUI builders to experienced people; I think beginners should always set out the layout by hand.

[Carey Brown]

Output from my sample code above.

[Christopher Laurenzano]

I'm going through  the demos in the tutorials -- for example, I downloaded the code re: GridLayout.  I tried to compile it, and got this message:

Note: GridLayoutDemo.java uses unchecked or unsafe operations.
Note: Recompile with -Xlint:unchecked for details.

Was wondering if anyone could tell me what this means.  I can't run the  demo.   The tutorials say this is for Java 8, so maybe that has something to do with it.  Any suggestions?

I thought I had posted this reply, but it isn't there for some reason, so my apologies if I'm posting it again.

[Carey Brown]

At this point you should never use any Java version older than 8. Java 8 had so many core changes that you should be using that at the very least. The recommended thing to do is use the most current LTS (Long Term Support) version, which right now is 17.

Note that 8 was released in 2014 - that's ancient.

[Christopher Laurenzano]

I didn't mean that I was using Java 8.  I meant the tutorial that covered this topic was for java 8.   I'm on Java 18 and I'm getting this message.  Could there be something in the code that could cause this?

[Ron McLeod]

It is probably due to one of the lines like this which performing some unchecked casting:

String horGap = (String)horGapComboBox.getSelectedItem();

I would ignore the warning (or hide it using the @SuppressWarnings("unchecked") annotation) and not let it be a distraction getting in the way of the goal of learning more about Swing and layout managers.