Swing thread issu

Question

I have a javax.swing.JFrame extended object that after running the code
        java.awt.EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
            public void run() {
                new chatUi().setVisible(true);
        });Continues to communicate with a network server over TCP and updates a table with information. By calls to System.out.println I can see that the communication with the server is succesfull but I cant update the gui. The only way i seme able to update the gui after that point is by events that are triggerd by the user and not by functions in my code.
What am I missing ?
Is the only way to work with the frame object by creating threads and running them by: SwingUtilities.invokeLater. ??
Any help would be greatly appriciated // Tomas

Answer 1

Hi,
A little bit of more code would be nice to see where your app don't do what it should do.
In general you should post every code that interacts with the gui into the EventDispatchThread(EDT)
a common way is to use the EventQueue as you did.
If one of your methods invokes changes on the gui you should them post on the EDT too.
If you want to look timebased for a special value or some networkoperations you can use
a Timer - in your case a javax.swing.Timer and not the java.util.Timer.
for further informations look at this tutorials :
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/misc/timer.html
http://java.sun.com/products/jfc/tsc/articles/timer/
An other nice way to let run longer threads posting intermediate results on the gui
is to use a SwingWorker -> javax.swing.SwingWorker
try those things
Olek