Trouble with JTextArea & JPassword field

Question

What I want to do, is have a simple text box, where a user can put text, and store this text in a String field.
For the password, I just want to let the user have a password field, have it come up as '****' and again store the password in a String field.
Right now, to do this I have:
for the text area:
JTextArea textArea = new JTextArea ("Hello ",8,40);
getContentPane().add(textArea);
textArea.setLineWrap(true);
comment = textArea.paramString();
but I get the 2 errors:
paramString() has protected access in javax.swing.JPasswordField
password = pass.paramString();
and
cannot resolve symbol
symbol : method getContentPane ()
For the password one, I have:
String password;
JPasswordField pass = new JPasswordField("Please enter your password: ");
pass.setEchoChar('*');
password = pass.paramString();
and I get the error:
paramString() has protected access in javax.swing.JTextArea
     comment = textArea.paramString();
Could someone help me as to how I get around these errors or another suggestion as to what I could use?
Thank you very much,
nickeeboo.

Answer 1

I have no idea why you're trying to mess with paramString(). A friendly word of advice: don't. Please take some time to look up the protected keyword (in relation to fields) and I think the reason for your errors will dawn on you.
There are far simpler ways of doing what you want, as you will see.
To get the text from a JTextArea, use
textArea.getText()To get the password from a JPasswordField, use
password.getPassword()