JRadioButton.setSelected(false) doesn't work?

Question

Hey there. I usually answer questions in this forum but this time I have a question myself. I'm trying to de-select JRadioButtons in a ButtonGroup but it's not working. I've searched the forum but didn't find anything. Here's the very simple code:
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
public class ButtonTest extends JFrame {
  JRadioButton rb1 = new JRadioButton("button1", true);
  JRadioButton rb2 = new JRadioButton("button2");
  ButtonGroup bgroup = new ButtonGroup();
  JButton b = new JButton("clear");
  ButtonTest() {
    b.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
      public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
        clearbuttons();
    bgroup.add(rb1);
    bgroup.add(rb2);
    Container c = getContentPane();
    c.setLayout(new GridLayout(2,2));
    c.add(rb1);
    c.add(rb2);
    c.add(b);
    addWindowListener(new WindowAdapter() {
      public void windowClosing(WindowEvent e) {
        System.exit(0);
  void clearbuttons() {
    Component [] components = getContentPane().getComponents();
    for (int i = 0; i < components.length; i++) {
      Component c = components[ i ];
System.out.println(c);
      if (c instanceof JRadioButton) {
        JRadioButton rb = (JRadioButton) c;
        rb.setSelected(false);  // once.
        bgroup.setSelected(rb.getModel(), false);  // twice.
System.out.println("\ncalled setSelected\n");
  public static void main (String[]a) {
    ButtonTest b = new ButtonTest();
    b.setSize(200,100);
    b.setVisible(true);
}Anybody know why the selected button remains selected?

Answer 1

The ButtonGroup ensures that one JRadioButton is always selected, at least after the first one is initially selected. The workaround to fix this is to add an additional "dummy" JRadioButton to the ButtonGroup, and have your code select it when you want to deselect the rest of the buttons. The dummy JRadioButton doesn't need to be added to the GUI or displayed, or anything.