How to trigger a hyperlink using a keystroke in a Swing JEditorPane

Question

I'm trying to fire hyperlinks in a JEditorPane using the "Enter" keystroke. So that the hyperlink (if any) under the caret will fire rather than having to click with the mouse.

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

First of all the HyperlinkEvent is only fired on a non-editable JEditorPane so it will be difficult for the users to know when the caret is over a link.

But if you do want to do this, then you should be using Key Bindings (not a KeyListener) to bind an Action to the ENTER KeyStroke.

One way to do this is to simulate a mouseClick by dispatching a MouseEvent to the editor pane when the Enter key is pressed. Something like this:

class HyperlinkAction extends TextAction
{
    public HyperlinkAction()
    {
        super("Hyperlink");
    }

    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ae)
    {
        JTextComponent component = getFocusedComponent();
        HTMLDocument doc = (HTMLDocument)component.getDocument();
        int position = component.getCaretPosition();
        Element e = doc.getCharacterElement( position );
        AttributeSet as = e.getAttributes();
        AttributeSet anchor = (AttributeSet)as.getAttribute(HTML.Tag.A);

        if (anchor != null)
        {
            try
            {
                Rectangle r = component.modelToView(position);

                MouseEvent me = new MouseEvent(
                    component,
                    MouseEvent.MOUSE_CLICKED,
                    System.currentTimeMillis(),
                    InputEvent.BUTTON1_MASK,
                    r.x,
                    r.y,
                    1,
                    false);

                component.dispatchEvent(me);
            }
            catch(BadLocationException ble) {}
        }
    }
}