Questionable Legality: HyperlinkListener without URLs

Question

Hey guys,
My goal is to have website-style links in a JEditorPane that cause certain behaviors in my GUI when the user clicks them.
The SSCCE below works exactly how I'd want it to. The only problem is, I feel a bit dirty using a HyperlinkListener in such a seemingly non-standard way. Is there a better/standard way to accomplish my goal? I thought of using a JTextPane with clickable JLabels inserted where my hyperlinks now go, but using the HyperlinkListener seems simpler.
Here is the potentially shameful SSCCE I came up with:
import java.awt.Color;
import javax.swing.*;
import javax.swing.event.*;
public class EditorLinkTest {
   public EditorLinkTest() {
      JFrame frame = new JFrame("EditorPane Link Test");
      frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
      final JEditorPane textComponent = new JEditorPane();
      textComponent.setEditable(false);
      textComponent.setContentType("text/html");
      String text = "Background color:<br/>" +
         "<a href='red'>Click here</a> for red.<br/>"+
         "<a href='white'>Click here</a> for white.<br/>";
      textComponent.setText(text);
      textComponent.addHyperlinkListener(new HyperlinkListener() {
         public void hyperlinkUpdate(HyperlinkEvent e) {
            if (e.getEventType() == HyperlinkEvent.EventType.ACTIVATED) {
               try {
                   //e.getURL() would cause a NPE, for obvious reasons
                  String link = e.getDescription();
                  System.out.println("Link: " + link);
                  if(link.contains("red")){
                     textComponent.setBackground(Color.RED);
                  else if(link.contains("white")){
                     textComponent.setBackground(Color.WHITE);
               catch (Exception ex) {
                  System.err.println("Error: " + ex);
      JScrollPane scrollPane = new JScrollPane(textComponent, JScrollPane.VERTICAL_SCROLLBAR_AS_NEEDED, JScrollPane.HORIZONTAL_SCROLLBAR_AS_NEEDED);
      frame.add(scrollPane);
      frame.setSize(200, 200);
      frame.setVisible(true);
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      new EditorLinkTest();
}So, what say you? Am I just being paranoid about what is a "valid" use of a HyperlinkListener? Or should I man up and change my GUI so that it uses a JTextPane with clickable components that cause the desired behavior? Do I not fix what ain't broke, or do I delete this dirty code before anybody else sees it?
I'm on the fence myself, so any input would be appreciated.

Answer 1

I see nothing on my stdout (I'm using JDK1.6.0_11, WinXP) when I click the links... And I'm not able to debug why (never used HyperlinkEvents before).That's really weird. I'm using JDK1.6.0_17, WinXP. I'll have to investigate whether it works other platforms, I suppose :(Works home (JDK 1.6.0_11, WInXP too). Beats me...
Anyway at least I could investigate forward...
Instead of "parsing" the event's description, couldn't you get its Element property, and look at the Element's attributes?I've been playing with this for a while now, but I can't seem to find anything useful from HyperlinkEvent.getSourceElement().anything. Am I missing something?I tried this. Seems to work:
         public void hyperlinkUpdate(HyperlinkEvent e) {
            if (e.getEventType() == HyperlinkEvent.EventType.ACTIVATED) {
               try {
                   //e.getURL() would cause a NPE, for obvious reasons
                  // String link = e.getDescription();
                  AttributeSet attrs = e.getSourceElement().getAttributes();
                  AttributeSet aTagAttrs = (AttributeSet)attrs.getAttribute(HTML.Tag.A);
                  String link = (String)aTagAttrs.getAttribute(HTML.Attribute.HREF);
                  System.out.println("href VALUE: " + link);
                  if(link.equals("red")){
                     textComponent.setBackground(Color.RED);
                  else if(link.equals("white")){
                     textComponent.setBackground(Color.WHITE);
               catch (Exception ex) {
                  System.err.println("Error: " + ex);
         }I don't know what worse... Parsing the undocumented description string, vs relying on the poorly-documented types and hierarchy of AttributeSets... Assuming this latter is reliable, I much prefer it: after all once digged through it, makes sense that there is an <A> tag, whose HREF attribute contains the link string. What makes less sense is that I had to inspect the private attributes of JDK classes in a debugger to discover the types and values of those! >o(