Custom text painting using JTextField

Question

Greetings all!
I would like to implement a custom JTextField that displays text in gradient colors instead of the usual solid colors.
I guess I would need to override the default painting mechanism in JTextField, but I'm not sure how to go about it.
Would appreciate if anyone can give me any suggestions/tips!
Thanks so much!
Dora
public class GradientTextField extends JTextField {
}

Answer 1

it will work only if the size of the textfield is large enough (no scrolling).Good point. Here's a newer version that seems to work ok, assuming the text is left justified.
import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;
public class GradientTextField extends JTextField
    private Color from;
    private Color to;
    private Insets insets;
    private Point view = new Point();
    public GradientTextField(Color from, Color to)
        this.from = from;
        this.to = to;
        insets = getInsets();
    public void paintComponent(Graphics g)
        setForeground( getBackground() );
        super.paintComponent(g);
        //  Get the text to paint, assuming left justification
        getInsets( insets );
        view.x = insets.left;
        view.y = insets.top;
        int offset = viewToModel( view );
        String text = getText().substring(offset);
        //  Create the GradientPaint object
        FontMetrics fm = g.getFontMetrics();
        int width = fm.stringWidth( text );
        int x = insets.left;
        int y = fm.getAscent() + insets.top;
        GradientPaint paint = new GradientPaint(x, 0, from, x + width, 0, to);
        //  Use the GradientPaint object to overwrite the existing text
        Graphics2D g2d = (Graphics2D)g;
        g2d.setPaint(paint);
        g2d.drawString(text, x, y);
    public static void main(String[] args)
        JTextField textField = new GradientTextField(Color.blue, Color.green);
        textField.setText("ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWZYZ");
        JFrame frame = new JFrame("Gradient Text Field");
        frame.setDefaultCloseOperation( JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE );
        frame.getContentPane().add(textField, BorderLayout.SOUTH);
        frame.pack();
        frame.setLocationRelativeTo( null );
        frame.setVisible(true);
}It's probably not a complete solution, but it may be helpful is specific situations.