Configuring what element gets enter key press in JDialog?

Question

Hi all,
In windows applications, some dialogs or windows, have a specific button that gets activated when enter is pressed. E.g. in a JDialog, the OK button would normally be activated when no button had focus. How do you set this to be? Is there some API call to do this? And is there some way to do the same with the escape key, so that cancel will always get triggered when its pressed?
I just don't want to have to manually add a key listener to each component in the dialog that listens for the escape and enter buttons to be pressed.
thanks,
J

Answer 1

As for the Esc key, there is nothing "out of the box" to do this. I created a JDialog sub-class to handle it, which I use in place of JDialog throughout my app. In the JDialog sub-class, over-ride the createRootPane() method as follows:
    * Overriding this method to register an action so the 'Esc' key will dismiss
    * the dialog.
    * @return a <code>JRootPane</code> with the appropiate action registered
   protected JRootPane createRootPane()
      JRootPane pane = super.createRootPane();
      pane.getInputMap( JComponent.WHEN_IN_FOCUSED_WINDOW ).
         put( KeyStroke.getKeyStroke( KeyEvent.VK_ESCAPE, 0 ), "escPressed" );
      pane.getActionMap().put( "escPressed",
         new AbstractAction( "escPressed" )
            public void actionPerformed( ActionEvent actionEvent )
               onDialogClose();
      return pane;
   }then, create an abstract onDialogClose() method like the following:
    * This method gets called when the user attemps to close the JDialog via the
    * 'Esc' key.  It is up to the sub-class to implement this method and handle
    * the situation appropriately.
   protected abstract void onDialogClose();Alternatively, you could create a default implemenation of onDialogClose() instead of making it abstract; sub-classes could still over-ride it if they needed custom behavior.
HTH,
Jamie