Trapping KeyEvents

Question

I've been approached by a student who wants to create a game that uses the keyboard from Swing. We've tried a couple of approaches already:
1) Making the JApplet itself the KeyListener (no effect)
2) Adding a KeyListener to glassPane (no effect)
     getContentPane().addKeyListener(new java.awt.event.KeyListener() {
               public void keyPressed (KeyEvent e)          {}
               public void keyReleased (KeyEvent e)     {}
               public void keyTyped (java.awt.event.KeyEvent e) {
                    keyTyped(e);
We're looking for a technique that will trap the KeyEvents for the whole window. Anyone know how to do this?

Answer 1

Here's the code:
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.Dimension;
public class KeyDemoApplet extends javax.swing.JApplet implements KeyListener{
JTextArea displayArea;
JTextField typingArea;
static final String newline = "\n";
public void init() {
typingArea = new JTextField(20);
typingArea.addKeyListener(this);
displayArea = new JTextArea();
displayArea.setEditable(false);
JScrollPane scrollPane = new JScrollPane(displayArea);
scrollPane.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(375, 125));
JPanel contentPane = new JPanel();
contentPane.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
contentPane.add(typingArea, BorderLayout.NORTH);
contentPane.add(scrollPane, BorderLayout.CENTER);
setContentPane(contentPane);
typingArea.requestFocus();
/** Handle the key typed event from the text field. */
public void keyTyped(KeyEvent e) {
switch (e.getKeyChar())     {
     case KeyEvent.VK_UP:     displayArea.append ("^"+newline); break;
     case KeyEvent.VK_DOWN:     displayArea.append ("V"+newline); break;
     case KeyEvent.VK_LEFT:     displayArea.append ("<"+newline); break;
     case KeyEvent.VK_RIGHT:     displayArea.append (">"+newline); break;
/** Handle the key pressed event from the text field. */
public void keyPressed(KeyEvent e) {}
/** Handle the key released event from the text field. */
public void keyReleased(KeyEvent e) {}
* We have to jump through some hoops to avoid
* trying to print non-printing characters
* such as Shift. (Not only do they not print,
* but if you put them in a String, the characters
* afterward won't show up in the text area.)
protected void displayInfo(KeyEvent e, String s){
String charString, keyCodeString, modString, tmpString;
char c = e.getKeyChar();
int keyCode = e.getKeyCode();
int modifiers = e.getModifiers();
if (Character.isISOControl(c)) {
charString = "key character = "
+ "(an unprintable control character)";
} else {
charString = "key character = '"
+ c + "'";
keyCodeString = "key code = " + keyCode
+ " ("
+ KeyEvent.getKeyText(keyCode)
+ ")";
modString = "modifiers = " + modifiers;
tmpString = KeyEvent.getKeyModifiersText(modifiers);
if (tmpString.length() > 0) {
modString += " (" + tmpString + ")";
} else {
modString += " (no modifiers)";
displayArea.append(s + newline
+ " " + charString + newline
+ " " + keyCodeString + newline
+ " " + modString + newline);