Creating jbutton name dynamically

Question

I am trying to create a Battleship type game. It is a gui with the standard 10x10 grid. I am using JButtons for this. My issue is that originally I was using a loop with a generic name for the JButton like this:
JButton cell = new JButton();
                    cell.addActionListener(this);
                    offensePanel.add(cell);This will not work as I am unable to use an action listener on a specific button (because of the generic name: cell). My next thought was to dynamically name the buttons from an arraylist of potential names (A1, B2,...) I cannot seem to make this work either
cells.add(getRow(i).concat(getCol(i)));
                    JButton cells.get(j) = new JButton();Cells is an arraylist in the above example. Does anyone have any idea on how I might be able to do this or better yet, maybe a better design idea? Thanks.

Answer 1

Thanks for the reply. I will just post the entire code as it is:
package battleship;
import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import java.util.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
public class BattleshipGUI implements ActionListener{
    String[] yAxisLabel = {"A","B","C","D","E","F","G","H","I","J"};
    String[] xAxisLabel = {"1","2","3","4","5","6","7","8","9","10"};
    ArrayList<String> cells = new ArrayList<String>();
    String row;
    String col;
    int j = 0;
    public void buildGUI(){
        JFrame theFrame = new JFrame("Battleship");
        theFrame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        BorderLayout layout = new BorderLayout();
        JPanel background = new JPanel(layout);
        background.setBorder(BorderFactory.createEmptyBorder(10,10,10,10));
        GridLayout grid = new GridLayout(11,11,1,1);
        JPanel defensePanel = new JPanel(grid);
        JPanel offensePanel = new JPanel(grid);
        background.add(BorderLayout.WEST, defensePanel);
        background.add(BorderLayout.EAST, offensePanel);
        for (int i = 0; i < 121; i++){          
            if (i == 0){
                Label blank = new Label();
                defensePanel.add(blank);
                continue;
            else{
                if (i < 11){
                    Label xCoord = new Label(xAxisLabel[i-1]);
                    defensePanel.add(xCoord);
                else if (i%11 == 0){
                    Label yCoord = new Label(yAxisLabel[(i/11) - 1]);
                    defensePanel.add(yCoord);
                else{               
                    JButton cell = new JButton();
                    defensePanel.add(cell);
                    cell.addActionListener(this);
                    cells.add(getRow(i).concat(getCol(i)));
                    JButton cells.get(j) = new JButton();    //----this line
                    System.out.println(cells.get(j));
                    j++;
        for (int i = 0; i < 121; i++){          
            if (i == 0){
                Label blank = new Label();
                offensePanel.add(blank);
                continue;
            else{
                if (i < 11){
                    Label xCoord = new Label(xAxisLabel[i-1]);
                    offensePanel.add(xCoord);
                else if (i%11 == 0){
                    Label yCoord = new Label(yAxisLabel[(i/11) - 1]);
                    offensePanel.add(yCoord);
                else{
                    JButton cell = new JButton();
                    cell.addActionListener(this);
                    offensePanel.add(cell);
        theFrame.getContentPane().add(background);
        theFrame.pack();
        theFrame.setVisible(true);
    public String getRow(int index){
        row = yAxisLabel[((index - (index%11))/11) - 1];
        return row;
    public String getCol(int index){
        col = xAxisLabel[(index%11) - 1];
        return col;
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ev){
}I have tried a couple of different ways in the above code. (actionPerformed is blank since I couldn't think of a way to make it work) This will compile and run if the marked line is taken out. Again, my idea was to create individual button names dynamically at compile time so that a actionPerformed event could be associated with it. Am I heading in the right direction or should I turn around and rethink what is needed?
Sorry, will compile and run if a main is added:
    public static void main(String[] args){
        BattleshipGUI ship = new BattleshipGUI();
        ship.buildGUI();
    }Edited by: sdhalepaska on Sep 27, 2007 4:27 PM