Resizing JTextField in JMenuBar

Question

I'm trying to add a JTextField as a search bar to a JMenuBar at the top of my JFrame. My problem is that the JTextField keeps getting resized to take up all available space in the JMenuBar, and I don't want it to. I've tried setPreferredSize() and setMaximum Size(), but these didnt work, presumably because the LayoutManager used in the JMenuBar doesn't respect these sizes. I also tried adding the JTextField to a JPanel with a FlowLayout and adding the panel to the JMenuBar, but I get something that looks like this:

The panel is on the right side of the JMenuBar, and the size seems to be correct, but I can't see anything in it other than this weird blue bar.

Here's the code that (I think) is relevant. Let me know if more is needed:

       JPanel searchPanel = new JPanel();
    searchPanel.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(100, 25));


    JTextField searchBar = new JTextField(50);

    String[] fields = {"title", "author", "subject", "publisher", "year", "circulating", "catalog" };


    JComboBox searchFields = new JComboBox(fields);

    JButton searchBtn = new JButton("search");

    searchPanel.add(searchBar);
    searchPanel.add(searchFields);
    searchPanel.add(searchBtn);
    searchPanel.setVisible(true);

    fileMenu.add(open);
    fileMenu.add(save);
    fileMenu.add(exit);

    libMenu.add(viewLib);
    libMenu.addSeparator();
    libMenu.add(newBook);
    libMenu.add(search);

    this.setJMenuBar(topBar);
       topBar.add(fileMenu);
    topBar.add(libMenu);
    topBar.add(Box.createHorizontalGlue());
   topBar.add(searchPanel);

Answer 1

This works for me.

menuBar.add(Box.createHorizontalGlue());
JTextField textField = new JTextField(10);
textField.setMaximumSize( textField.getPreferredSize() );
menuBar.add(textField);

Post an SSCCE if you need more help.

Edit:

Again, the code is posted was just to show that the problem is in containing the maximum size of the text field. How you choose to do this is up to you.