Is it possible to detect when someone presses Enter while typing in a JTextField in java? Without having to create a button and set it as the default.
A JTextField
was designed to use an ActionListener
just like a JButton
is. See the addActionListener()
method of JTextField
.
For example:
Action action = new AbstractAction()
{
@Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
{
System.out.println("some action");
}
};
JTextField textField = new JTextField(10);
textField.addActionListener( action );
Now the event is fired when the Enter key is used.
Also, an added benefit is that you can share the listener with a button even if you don't want to make the button a default button.
JButton button = new JButton("Do Something");
button.addActionListener( action );
Note, this example uses an Action
, which implements ActionListener
because Action
is a newer API with addition features. For example you could disable the Action
which would disable the event for both the text field and the button.