Front window

Question

My application may have any number of opened JFrames. Is there a way to determine which frame is currently the front most frame of a particular type?
I tried tracking window events and focus events, but I may need to find a window that has not recently become active or gained focus.

Answer 1

Why not use JDialogs rather than the JFrames? They seem more natural for this. Anyways, focus listeners seem to work for me:
import java.awt.Dimension;
import java.awt.Window;
import java.awt.event.WindowEvent;
import java.awt.event.WindowFocusListener;
import javax.swing.JDialog;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
class OpenWindows
    private JPanel mainPanel = new JPanel();
    private JDialog[] dialogs = new JDialog[10];
    private Window topWindow = null;
    public OpenWindows(JFrame pFrame)
        final JFrame frame = pFrame;
        frame.setName("main frame");
        MyFocusListener focusListener = new MyFocusListener(this);
        frame.addWindowFocusListener(focusListener);
        mainPanel.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(200, 200));
        for (int i = 0; i < dialogs.length; i++)
            dialogs[i] = new JDialog(frame, "Dialog " + i, false);
            dialogs.setName("Dialog " + i);
dialogs[i].addWindowFocusListener(focusListener);
dialogs[i].setPreferredSize(new Dimension(200, 200));
dialogs[i].pack();
dialogs[i].setLocationRelativeTo(null);
dialogs[i].setVisible(true);
public JPanel getMainPanel()
return mainPanel;
public void windowOnTop()
System.out.println(topWindow.getName());
private class MyFocusListener implements WindowFocusListener
private OpenWindows openWindow;
public MyFocusListener(OpenWindows openwindows)
this.openWindow = openwindows;
public void windowGainedFocus(WindowEvent we)
topWindow = we.getWindow();
openWindow.windowOnTop();
public void windowLostFocus(WindowEvent arg0)
private static void createAndShowGUI()
JFrame frame = new JFrame("OpenWindows Application");
frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
frame.getContentPane().add(new OpenWindows(frame).getMainPanel());
frame.pack();
frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
frame.setVisible(true);
public static void main(String[] args)
javax.swing.SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable()
public void run()
createAndShowGUI();