Getting the value from a Swing component from outside the EDT

Question

My current code looks like this:

final String[] value = new String[1];

SwingUtilities.invokeAndWait(new Runnable() {
    public void run() {
        value[0] = textArea.getText();
    }
});

The use of a final array seems like a bit of a hack. Is there a more elegant solution?

I've done a lot of searching, but I don't seem to be able to find anything to do this, which surprises me. Although I keep coming across SwingWorker, but I'm not sure that's suitable in this case?

I'm assuming that JTextArea.getText() isn't thread-safe.

Thanks.

Answer 1

All problems can be solved by adding another layer of indirection (except when you have too many layers :P).

public class TextSaver implements Runnable
{
    private final JTextArea textArea;
    private final ObjectToSaveText saveHere;

    public TextSaver(JTextArea textArea, ObjectToSaveText saveHere)
    {
        this.textArea = textArea;
        this.saveHere = saveHere;
    }

    @Override
    public void run()
    {
        saveHere.save(textArea.getText());
    }
}

I'm not going to provide the code for ObjectToSaveText, but you get the idea. Then your SwingUtilties call just becomes:

SwingUtilities.invokeAndWait(new TextSaver(textArea, saveHere));

You can retrieve the saved text from your saveHere object.