Referencing Components in HashMaps

Question

Hi All,
In my current little project I am using a HashMap to manage my components. They are referenced everywhere from the hashmap and everything was going smoothly up until now.
I am still relatively new to Java, but not new to OOP and general programming principles.
The HashMap contains JLabel's and JTextField's, now, whenever I try to reference one, I get the component I seek but I cannot access some of the methods. Obviously this is because the compiler only see's the instances as generic classes and will only accept methods from JComponent. How do I tell the compiler that the component being referenced is a JTextField?
My first thought would be that an explicit cast would be required, but that doesn't seem to work.
Any and all help would be appreciated :)

Answer 1

My first thought would be that an explicit cast would be required, but that doesn't seem to work.Explicit cast should work.. E.g:
JTextField textField = (JTextField) map.get("key");
String text = textField.getText();If you are still having problems, post the code that you have tried.