Create JFrame window with mouse event handling

Byron KiourtzoglouNovember 11th, 2012Last Updated: April 19th, 2013

1 709 1 minute read

This is an example that demonstrates how to create a JFrame windows that supports mouse event handling. This is very useful in most GUI applications because most of the time it is very efficient for the user to provide input using his mouse. Additionally, you can make your application behave accordingly to mouse movement and generally to mouse events.

Basically all you have to do in order to create a JFrame that handles mouse events is:

Create a class that extends JFrame and implements MouseListener.
Overrde mouseClicked, mouseEntered, mouseExited, mousePressed, mouseReleased to monitor the coresponding events. Now every time one of these events occures, the respective function will fire up.
Use MouseEvent.getX(), MouseEvent.getY() to get the coordinates of the window that the mouse event occurs.

Let’s see the code:

package com.javacodegeeks.snippets.desktop;

import java.awt.event.MouseEvent;
import java.awt.event.MouseListener;

import javax.swing.JFrame;

public class CreateJFrameWindowWithMouseEventHandling extends JFrame implements MouseListener {

	private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

	public CreateJFrameWindowWithMouseEventHandling() {
		setTitle("Simple Frame");
		addMouseListener(this);
	}

	@Override
	public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e) {
		int x = e.getX();
		int y = e.getY();
		System.out.println("Mouse Clicked at X: " + x + " - Y: " + y);
	}

	@Override
	public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent e) {
		int x = e.getX();
		int y = e.getY();
		System.out.println("Mouse Entered frame at X: " + x + " - Y: " + y);
	}

	@Override
	public void mouseExited(MouseEvent e) {
		int x = e.getX();
		int y = e.getY();
		System.out.println("Mouse Exited frame at X: " + x + " - Y: " + y);
	}

	@Override
	public void mousePressed(MouseEvent e) {
		int x = e.getX();
		int y = e.getY();
		System.out.println("Mouse Pressed at X: " + x + " - Y: " + y);
	}

	@Override
	public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent e) {
		int x = e.getX();
		int y = e.getY();
		System.out.println("Mouse Released at X: " + x + " - Y: " + y);
	}

	private static void createAndShowGUI() {

  //Create and set up the window.

  JFrame frame = new CreateJFrameWindowWithMouseEventHandling();

  //Display the window.

  frame.setVisible(true);

  frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);

    }

	public static void main(String[] args) {

  //Schedule a job for the event-dispatching thread:

  //creating and showing this application's GUI.

  javax.swing.SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {

public void run() {

    createAndShowGUI(); 

}

  });
    }

}

This was an example on how to create JFrame window with mouse event handling.