Detecting mouse click on a line

Question

I'm learning making GUI apps in Java.
Here is my problem. Suppose I draw a line on a JPanel. If I want to find out if the line is clicked or not, what is the best way to do it?
I did some research, looked at API. If I suppose my line is Line2D, then since its a line it doesn't have an area, so its contains method always returns false (..from API). So i dig around some more and came up with the solution of getting the shape from the stroke and calling its contains method.
This is a code for what i mean..
private Line2D.Double testLine;
//mouse clicked event
public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e) {
        int x = e.getX();
        int y = e.getY();
        BasicStroke stroke = new BasicStroke(4);
        Shape testShape = stroke.createStrokedShape(testLine);
        if(testShape.contains(x,y)){
            System.out.println("this will be printed if clicked on line");
    }Well, the above solution works fine.
Is it the right way of doing it or is there a better way around for this?
Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks.

Answer 1

When trying to test if a line was pressed I usually test if the distance between the mouse coordinates and the line is smaller than some constant (usually 5 pixels).
For this you have to write your own code to calculate the distance between a point and a line.