Chat client sorta

Question

I have to write this Chat client program for a class, not fully functioning, but I can't figure out what to do in order to have text from one window where it is to be entered to copy to another widow were all messages end up.. I tried InputStreamReader to do it, but couldn't get that to work..either it was the way I was triing to do it or it isn't what I should be using.. not sure..Anyway how would I do this? What should I be using?

Answer 1

Make two JFrames. One will hold a JTextArea for the text, the other will send data. Create an instance of that first object in your second, passing a reference to the JTextArea. Like this:
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
     class InputWin extends JFrame {
          private JTextArea refArea;
          private JLabel textLabel;
          private JTextField text;
          private JButton button;
          public InputWin(JTextArea refArea) {
               this.refArea = refArea;
               textLabel = new JLabel("Send:");
               text = new JTextField(20);
               button = new JButton("Send");
               this.getContentPane().setLayout(new java.awt.FlowLayout());
               this.getContentPane().add(textLabel);
               this.getContentPane().add(text);
               this.getContentPane().add(button);
               this.pack();
               this.setResizable(false);
               this.setTitle("Send Text");
               this.setDefaultCloseOperation(EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
               this.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
                    button.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
                         public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
                              sendText();
          private void sendText() {
               refArea.append(text.getText() + "\n");
               text.setText("");
               text.requestFocus();
     public class TextFrame extends JFrame {
          private JTextArea jta;
          private JScrollPane jsp;
          private InputWin inputWin;
          public TextFrame() {
               jta = new JTextArea();
               jta.setLineWrap(true);
               jta.setWrapStyleWord(true);
               jsp = new JScrollPane(jta);
               inputWin = new InputWin(jta); /* pass the JTextArea as a reference to your InputWin class */
               this.getContentPane().add(jsp);
               this.pack();
               this.setSize(400, 400);
               this.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
               this.setTitle("Text Pane");
               this.setDefaultCloseOperation(EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
               inputWin.setVisible(true);
          public static void main(String[] argv) { new TextFrame().setVisible(true); }
     }