Giving a Class an ImageIcon

Question

hello all,
i am a relative beginner to java and am having a small bit of difficulty in a small venture, and was wondering if someone could help.
I am in the middle of creating a top-down tile-based turn-based engine. I am currently at very early stages.
- i have a class called "tile". This only contains code for two ints (TerrainType and MovementCost).
- I make a grid of references, and then apply a whatever.tile to each reference, using an array, which defines the map.
- The trouble is at the nestedloop, where i cannot apply an "ImageIcon" to class.tile.
How should i change my code? By the way, this is my 2nd version of this - The first version, used jLabels instead of class.tile, and it worked fine. However i couldnt figure out how to apply attributes to it.
*****CODE******
ImageIcon block = new ImageIcon("block.gif");
ImageIcon grass = new ImageIcon("grass.gif");
tile t0 = new tile();
tile t1 = new tile();
tile t2 = new tile();
tile t3 = new tile();
ArrayList tt = new ArrayList();
tt.add("0");
tt.add("0");
tt.add("0");
tt.add("1");
tt.add("x");
int max_rows = 2;
int max_cols = 2;
int x = 0;
tile[][] grid = new tile[max_rows][max_cols];
grid[0][0] = t0;
grid[0][1] = t1;
grid[1][0] = t2;
grid[1][1] = t3;
for (int r = 0; r < max_rows; r++) {
for (int c = 0; c < max_cols; c++) {
if (tt.get(0).equals("0")){
grid[r][c].setIcon(grass); <<<<error
tt.remove(0);}
else if (tt.get(0).equals("1")){
grid[r][c].setIcon(block); <<<<error
tt.remove(0);}
**********class code*****
package mapalpha;
public class tile {
int TerrainType;
int MovementCost;
public tile() {
}

Answer 1

To add an 'attribute' to a JLabel: since JLabel extends from JComponent you can use the 'putClientProperty' and the 'getClientProperty' methods to store/retrieve attribute-type information in the component. See the method detail section for each method in the JComponent api.
On your current design: you can put anything you want in your custom Tile class - ImageIcon, JLabel, JPanel, an image...
class Tile
    int terrainType, movementCost;
    BufferedImage image;
    ImageIcon icon;
    JLabel label;
    public Tile(args for instantiation if you like...)
    protected void setIcon(ImageIcon icon)
        this.icon = icon;
        // other activity if you like
}If you want an image/graphics component you could have Tile extend JPanel or JLabel. Then you could override the 'paintComponent' method in JPanel and draw your image/graphics. If extending JLabel simply call 'setIcon' which will be a JLabel method - not the same as in the pseudo code above (which is a 'set' method for the Tile class).