"Smart" autoscrolling in Java?

Question

NOTE: I am reasking this question because I need an answer to it, and the answer there has a broken link.

I am writing a simple chat program as part of a project for school, and I wanted the user to be able to automatically track messages as they come if they are at the bottom, but not be bothered by having to scroll up again if they are looking at something higher up. Currently, my code is just scroll to the bottom no matter what. Basic code is below, and I really don't know how to convert it to an SSCCE. If anyone can, please feel free to do so.

JTextArea jta = new JTextArea(50, 50);
JScrollPane scroll = new JScrollPane(jta);
try {
    int iter = 0;
    while (true) { //Not a for loop because it should not end after x iterations
        Thread.sleep(500);
        jta.append("Test text #" + iter);
        iter++;
        //Check if they are at the bottom and if so scroll down to the new bottom.
    }
} catch (InterruptedException ex) {
    System.out.println("Error!");
}

Answer 1

Edit:

I replaced the following code with a more flexible version that will work on any component in a JScrollPane. Check out: Smart Scrolling.

Here is some reusable code that can be used by any scrollpane containing a JTextArea or a JTextPane:

import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import java.util.Date;
import javax.swing.*;
import javax.swing.text.*;

public class ScrollControl implements AdjustmentListener
{
    private JScrollBar scrollBar;
    private JTextComponent textComponent;
    private int previousExtent = -1;

    public ScrollControl(JScrollPane scrollPane)
    {
        Component view = scrollPane.getViewport().getView();

        if (! (view instanceof JTextComponent))
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("Scrollpane must contain a JTextComponent");

        textComponent = (JTextComponent)view;

        scrollBar = scrollPane.getVerticalScrollBar();
        scrollBar.addAdjustmentListener( this );
    }

    @Override
    public void adjustmentValueChanged(final AdjustmentEvent e)
    {
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable()
        {
            public void run()
            {
                checkScrollBar(e);
            }
        });
    }

    private void checkScrollBar(AdjustmentEvent e)
    {
        //  The scroll bar model contains information needed to determine the
        //  caret update policy.

        JScrollBar scrollBar = (JScrollBar)e.getSource();
        BoundedRangeModel model = scrollBar.getModel();
        int value = model.getValue();
        int extent = model.getExtent();
        int maximum = model.getMaximum();
        DefaultCaret caret = (DefaultCaret)textComponent.getCaret();

        //  When the size of the viewport changes there is no need to change the
        //  caret update policy.

        if (previousExtent != extent)
        {
            //  When the height of a scrollpane is decreased the scrollbar is
            //  moved up from the bottom for some reason. Reposition the
            //  scrollbar at the bottom

            if (extent < previousExtent
            &&  caret.getUpdatePolicy() == DefaultCaret.UPDATE_WHEN_ON_EDT)
            {
                scrollBar.setValue( maximum );
            }

            previousExtent = extent;
            return;
        }

        //  Text components will not scroll to the bottom of a scroll pane when
        //  a bottom inset is used. Therefore the location of the scrollbar,
        //  the height of the viewport, and the bottom inset value must be
        //  considered when determining if the scrollbar is at the bottom.

        int bottom = textComponent.getInsets().bottom;

        if (value + extent + bottom < maximum)
        {
            if (caret.getUpdatePolicy() != DefaultCaret.NEVER_UPDATE)
                caret.setUpdatePolicy(DefaultCaret.NEVER_UPDATE);
        }
        else
        {
            if (caret.getUpdatePolicy() != DefaultCaret.UPDATE_WHEN_ON_EDT)
            {
                caret.setDot(textComponent.getDocument().getLength());
                caret.setUpdatePolicy(DefaultCaret.UPDATE_WHEN_ON_EDT);
            }
        }
    }

    private static void createAndShowUI()
    {
        JPanel center = new JPanel( new GridLayout(1, 2) );
        String text = "1\n2\n3\n4\n5\n6\n7\n8\n9\n0\n";

        final JTextArea textArea = new JTextArea();
        textArea.setText( text );
        textArea.setEditable( false );
        center.add( createScrollPane( textArea ) );
        System.out.println(textArea.getInsets());

        final JTextPane textPane = new JTextPane();
        textPane.setText( text );
        textPane.setEditable( false );
        center.add( createScrollPane( textPane )  );
        textPane.setMargin( new Insets(5, 3, 7, 3) );
        System.out.println(textPane.getInsets());

        JFrame frame = new JFrame();
        frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        frame.add(center, BorderLayout.CENTER);
        frame.setSize(500, 200);
        frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
        frame.setVisible(true);

        Timer timer = new Timer(2000, new ActionListener()
        {
            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
            {
                try
                {
                    Date now = new Date();
                    textArea.getDocument().insertString(textArea.getDocument().getLength(), "\n" + now.toString(), null);
                    textPane.getDocument().insertString(textPane.getDocument().getLength(), "\n" + now.toString(), null);
                }
                catch (BadLocationException e1) {}
            }
        });
        timer.start();
    }

    private static JComponent createScrollPane(JComponent component)
    {
        JScrollPane scrollPane = new JScrollPane(component);
        new ScrollControl( scrollPane );

        return scrollPane;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable()
        {
            public void run()
            {
                createAndShowUI();
            }
        });
    }
}

Edit:

Updated the code so that it will also work if the height of the scrollpane is decreased. For some reason the default behaviour is to move the scrollbar up one row which means the scrollbar will no longer remain at the bottom when new text is added.