How can I use the same thread to display time in both JPanel & status bar

Question

Hi everyone!
I'd like to ask for some assistance regarding the use of threads. I currently have an application that displays the current time, date & day on three separate JLabels on a JPanel by means of a thread class that I created and it's working fine.
I wonder how would I be able to use the same thread in displaying the current time, date & day in the status bar of my JFrame. I'd like to be able to display the date & time in the JPanel and JFrame synchronously. I am developing my application in Netbeans 4.1 so I was able to add a status bar in just a few clicks and codes.
I hope somebody would be able to help me on this one. A simple sample code would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

As you're using Swing, using threads directly just for this kind of purpose would be silly. You might as well use javax.swing.Timer, which has done a lot of the work for you already.
You would do it something like this...
    ActionListener timerUpdater = new ActionListener() {
        public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
            // DateFormat would be better, but this is an example.
            String timeString = new Date().toString();
            statusBar.setText(timeString);
            someOtherLabel.setText(timeString);
    new Timer(1000, timerUpdater).start();That code will update the time once a second. If you aren't going to display seconds, you might as well increase the delay.
The advantage of using a timer over using an explicit thread, is that multiple Swing timers will share a single thread. This way you don't blow out your thread count. :-)