return an ArrayList to swing with logger interface

Question

I'm using the code in this answer to provide logging functionality, and it works well! Thanks gustafc.

Sending messages to a swing JTextArea from different places

I want to use this approach and add the function: writeEntry(String, String) to write to an ArrayList that I can hopefully access from swing; i.e, click 'show' and have it write this list of word pairs to a JText element.

so adding a bit to gustafc's code.

the interface:

package com.example.logging;
public interface SimpleActivityLogger {
    void logAction(String message);
    void writeEntry(String s1); //*** I added this ***
}

passing it to another class as per gustafc's example:

public class SimpleComponentLogger implements SimpleActivityLogger{
    private JTextComponent target;
    private ArrayList data;

    public SimpleComponentLogger(JTextComponent target, ArrayList data){
        this.target = target;
        this.data = data;
    }

    public void logAction(final String message){
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable(){
            public void run(){
                target.setText(String.format("%s%s%n", new Object[]{target.getText(), message}));
            }
        });
    }

    public void writeEntry(String s1){
        data.add(s1);
        System.out.println("data array length: " + data.size());
    }
}

and then making an implementation:

// this originally extended NotesThread, 
// but I assume you won't have that on your system
public class LookupIterator3 extends Thread {
private SimpleActivityLogger logger;

// Constructor that passes logger instance
public LookupIterator3(SimpleActivityLogger logger){
    this.logger = logger;
}

public void doLookup(){
    this.start();
}

public void run()  {
    String[] words = {"the", "quick", "smart", "fox", "jumps", "over", "the", "lazy", "dog"};
    for(int i=0; i<words.length; i++){
        synchronized(words){
        try{
            logger.logAction(words[i]);
            words.wait(500);
        }
        catch(InterruptedException ie){ie.printStackTrace();}
        }
        logger.writeEntry(words[i]);
    }
}
}

however, when I try to access the ArrayList from swing, it comes back size()=0. Here's a big chunk of swing, but you should be able to just copy and paste it:

public class MySwingTest extends JFrame {
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
    private JTextField filename = new JTextField();
    private JTextField dir = new JTextField();

    private JTextPane output, answersPane;
    private JScrollPane scroller;
    private SimpleComponentLogger logger;
    private ArrayList answer;

    public MySwingTest() {
  JMenu fileMenu;
  JMenuBar menuBar;
  JMenuItem menuOpen, menuExit;

  JButton answerButton = new JButton("show answers");
  answerButton.addActionListener(new MyListener());

  menuBar = new JMenuBar();
  fileMenu = new JMenu("File");
  menuBar.add(fileMenu);
  menuOpen = new JMenuItem("open file");
  menuExit = new JMenuItem("exit");

  answer = new ArrayList();
  output = new JTextPane();
  logger = new SimpleComponentLogger(output, answer);
  scroller = new JScrollPane(output, JScrollPane.VERTICAL_SCROLLBAR_AS_NEEDED, 
                  JScrollPane.HORIZONTAL_SCROLLBAR_NEVER);
  output.setEditable(false);
  answer = new ArrayList();
  answersPane = new JTextPane();
  answersPane.setSize(100, 200);
  answersPane.setEditable(false);

  fileMenu.add(menuOpen);
  fileMenu.add(menuExit);

  menuOpen.addActionListener(new MyListener());
  menuExit.addActionListener(new MyListener());

  JPanel p = new JPanel();
  p.setLayout(new GridLayout(2, 1));
  p.add(filename);
  p.add(dir);

  Container cp = getContentPane();
  cp.add(menuBar,BorderLayout.NORTH);
  cp.add(p);
  cp.add(scroller, BorderLayout.CENTER);
  cp.add(answersPane, BorderLayout.WEST);
  cp.add(answerButton, BorderLayout.SOUTH);

  dir.setEditable(false);
    filename.setEditable(false);
}

// Inner class listener  
class MyListener implements ActionListener {
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
            String eventCommand = e.getActionCommand();
            if(eventCommand.equals("exit")){
                System.exit(0);
            }
            if(eventCommand.equals("show answers")){
                String entry = (String)answer.get(0);
                answersPane.setText(entry);         
            }
            else {
                LookupIterator3 lu3 = new LookupIterator3(logger);
                lu3.doLookup();
            }
        }
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        run(new MySwingTest(), 450, 600);
    }

    public static void run(JFrame frame, int width, int height) {
        frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        frame.setSize(width, height);
        frame.setVisible(true);
    }
}

Sorry about the long question, but this is doing my head in! Any suggestions? (I know I'm going to get ragged for writing a long qn, but I don't know what I could have left out)

OK. long edit complete. Open that baby up and select "open file" from the menu. It will run without a filechooser.

Answer 1

The problem is actually quite simple: in your MySwingTest constructor you have twice the line :

answer = new ArrayList();

once before you create your logger and once after. Simply drop the second call and it should work fine.

Note: it is really a bad practice to share ArrayList between your instances (responsability is spread over several classes). It would be a lot simpler if you only had your logger creating directly its own ArrayList and providing access to it with a getter. Even better, it could directly offer an access to the objects it contains (preventing the possibility for other instances to modify the content of the ArrayList).

Note 2: consider using interface-declaration over class-declaration: use List instead of ArrayList in order to reduce coupling.

Note 3: I would strongly encourage you tu type your collections: List<String> answer = new ArrayList<String>();