Export JComponent content to an image

Question

Hello,
I need to export a swing component graphical representation to a JPG or GIF image.
Somebody know how?
Best regards,
H?ctor

Answer 1

I do.
Oh you want me to tell you.
There's 2 ways to get the image:
1) Find the screen location of the component and use java.awt.Robot to get a screen capture.
2) Create a new BufferedImage the size of the component and call paintAll() on the component, passing it the BufferedImage's Graphics object.
Fortunately for you, I have the code for both just laying around... The advantage to using the Robot class, however, it's usually the only consistent way to get a shot of a frame which includes the window titlebar.
     public static BufferedImage grab(Component comp) {
          Point location = comp.getLocation();
          SwingUtilities.convertPointToScreen(location, comp);
          return grabImpl(comp, new Rectangle(location, comp.getSize()));
     private static BufferedImage grabImpl(Component comp, Rectangle bounds) {
          BufferedImage bi = null;
          // try using java.awt.Robot first, as this will allow it to get the
          // frame border (titlebar, etc.) for frames or dialogs.  The only
          // downside is that this grabs the window from the OS, so if there's
          // any overlapping windows or dialogs (from any application), that
          // will be included. 
          try {
               if(robot == null) {
                    robot = new Robot();
               bi = robot.createScreenCapture(bounds);
          } catch(java.awt.AWTException awte) {
               bi = grabByPaint(comp);
          return bi;
     public static BufferedImage grabByPaint(Component comp) {
          Dimension size = comp.getSize();
          BufferedImage bi = new BufferedImage(size.width, size.height, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB);
          Graphics2D g2d = bi.createGraphics();
          comp.paintAll(g2d);
          g2d.dispose();
          return bi;
     }As for saving that image, the javax.imageio package is where you want to look.