Help starting with GUI

Question

I am working on programing a program for my department, Meteorology, at school so that I can download images every five minutes. I have a version of this that works in the command line, but I want to add a gui to it now. I am not really sure how to start. I know that I need a drop down box with all of the radar sites and their call numbers, and a radio button so they can select the type of image that the user wants to download. These two parts then make up the URL of the image so I can download it. I tried makeing a gui by making each one of these components a separate class. Basically, I am wondering if I should start off by making the GUI all one class, or if each peice of it should be its own class that then gets tied together in a different part of the program. any help with GUI would be great as I am new to this step of programing having only worked in Java command line and Fortran 77. Thanks
Neil

Answer 1

Hi,
You can create a GUI from within one class. GUIs can be created for applications or applets. The following code is a simple GUI for an application using Swing components. You may need JDK 1.3.1_6.
To make your GUI functional you would need to add or implement Event Handlers preferably using the delegation model. Each control(buttons, textfield, etc) you need to define the event object(button clicks), the event source(button), and an event handler(understands the event and executes code that processes the event).
import javax.swing.*;
public class Customer
//Variable for frame window
static JFrame frameObj;
static JPanel panelObj;
//Variables of labels
JLabel labelCustName;
JLabel labelCustCellNo;
JLabel labelCustPackage;
JLabel labelCustAge;
//Variables for data entry controls
JTextField textCustName;
JTextField textCustCellNo;
JComboBox comboCustPackage;
JTextField textCustAge;
public static void main(String args[])
     //Creating the JFrame object
     frameObj = new JFrame("Customer Details Form");
     //Setting the close option
     frameObj.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
     //Making the frame visible
     frameObj.setVisible(true);
frameObj.setSize(300,300);
Customer customerObj = new Customer();
public Customer()
     //Add appropriate controls to the frame in the constructor
     //Create panel
     panelObj = new JPanel();
frameObj.getContentPane().add(panelObj);
//Setting close option
frameObj.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
//Create and add the appropriate controls
//Initializing labels
labelCustName = new JLabel("Customer Name: ");
labelCustCellNo = new JLabel("Cell Number: ");
labelCustPackage = new JLabel("Package: ");
labelCustAge = new JLabel("Age: ");
//Initializing data entry controls
textCustName = new JTextField(30);
textCustCellNo = new JTextField(15);
textCustAge = new JTextField(2);
String packages[] = {"Executive", "Standard"};
comboCustPackage = new JComboBox(packages);
//Adding controls for customer name
panelObj.add(labelCustName);
panelObj.add(textCustName);
//Adding controls for cell number
panelObj.add(labelCustCellNo);
panelObj.add(textCustCellNo);
//Adding controls for Package
panelObj.add(labelCustPackage);
panelObj.add(comboCustPackage);
//Adding controls for customer age
panelObj.add(labelCustAge);
panelObj.add(textCustAge);