Copy tab contents to another tab

Question

Hi,
I am designing a GUI application which has a JTabbedPane at the center. I have 2 tabs in the pane and i want the second tab to look same as the first one (i want to use the same components on the second tab too). In other words, i want them to be grafically the same. I do not want to duplicate code and create the same elements as in the first tab. How can i do this copying?

Answer 1

You can't have the same component added to different containers. A component has a single parent, and if you add it to a second container, it gets removed from the first. Try switching the order of the specified lines to see the difference when you add the button in a different order:
package sandbox;
public class ParentTest extends javax.swing.JFrame {
    private javax.swing.JButton button;
    private javax.swing.JPanel jPanel1;
    private javax.swing.JPanel jPanel2;
    public ParentTest() {
        initComponents();
    private void initComponents() {
        jPanel1 = new javax.swing.JPanel();
        jPanel2 = new javax.swing.JPanel();
        button = new javax.swing.JButton("Hello");
        getContentPane().setLayout(new java.awt.FlowLayout());
        setDefaultCloseOperation(javax.swing.WindowConstants.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        jPanel1.setBorder(javax.swing.BorderFactory.createTitledBorder("panel 1"));
        getContentPane().add(jPanel1);
        jPanel2.setBorder(javax.swing.BorderFactory.createTitledBorder("panel 2"));
        getContentPane().add(jPanel2);
        // switch these two lines to see which panel gets the button
        jPanel1.add(button);       
        jPanel2.add(button);
        pack();
    public static void main(String args[]) {
        java.awt.EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
            public void run() {
                new ParentTest().setVisible(true);
}