Trying to wait for a button press on a seperate JFrame- problems.

Question

Hi,
I've been getting aquainted with Java recently. I'd like to think I was reasonable now at creating console based applications but I'm having a lot of trouble getting used to the swing API. I'm making a little game type thing at the moment and part of it involves displaying a problem to the user in a seperate JFrame and returning which option they picked. If I was doing this in a console based App I'd probably do something along the lines of:
     while (UserInput == null) { //while they haven't entered anything continue to loop.
          UserInput = InputScanner.next(); //get the user's input
     }I thought I'd do something similar for my JFrame based app but haven't been able to do it. I essentially would like the code to not execute past a certain point until one of the options on the JFrame has been picked. Here's the code for the JFrame showing the dilemma to the user:
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import java.awt.*;
* This is the window displayed to a user with dilemma details
public class DilemmaWindow extends JFrame implements ActionListener {
    int OptionPicked = 0; //the option the user picks
    JLabel DescriptionLabel;
    JButton Button1;
    JButton Button2;
    public DilemmaWindow(String WindowTitle, String LabelText, String Button1Text, String Button2Text) {
        //construct the JFrame with the relevant parameters
        setTitle(WindowTitle);
        setDefaultCloseOperation(DO_NOTHING_ON_CLOSE);
        setLayout(new FlowLayout(FlowLayout.CENTER));
        Button1 = new JButton(Button1Text);
        Button2 = new JButton(Button2Text);
        Button1.addActionListener(this);
        Button2.addActionListener(this);
        DescriptionLabel = new JLabel();
        DescriptionLabel.setText(LabelText);
        add(DescriptionLabel);
        add(Button1);
        add(Button2);
        pack();
        setVisible(true);
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
        //determine which button was clicked and set OptionPicked accordingly
        if(evt.getSource() == Button1) {
            OptionPicked = 1;
        } else {
            OptionPicked = 2;
    public int GetDilemmaChoice() {
        if (OptionPicked > 0) { //if an option was picked
        this.dispose(); //clean up the window
        return OptionPicked; //return which option was picked
}The idea of this being that it constructs a window and when the GetDilemmaChoice() function is called it'll return which button has been clicked.
I do, as I said, want to wait until one of the buttons has been clicked before continuing with the execution of the code in the class that constructs the JFrame, so I made the following function:
public int GetDilemmaChoice() {
        int Choice = 0;
        DilemmaWindow MyDilemmaWindow = new DilemmaWindow(CaperDilemma.GetDilemmaName(),CaperDilemma.GetDilemmaDescription(),CaperDilemma.GetOption1Text(),CaperDilemma.GetOption2Text());
        while (Choice == 0) {
            Choice = MyDilemmaWindow.GetDilemmaChoice();      
        return Choice;
    }The idea being that while the window returns that no buttons have been clicked the function loops round. The problem I'm having is that the while loop continually looping seems to hog all the CPU time or something, as the dilemma JFrame doesn't display properly (I get a blank window, with none of the buttons) and so I can't click any of the options. I've been banging my head against a brick wall all day trying to get round this and am wondering if I should put the looping in a seperate thread or something. Sadly, though, I don't know anything about threads so wouldn't know where to start.
If anyone has any idea of how to solve this problem I'd be very grateful! I hope I've managed to explain it well enough.

Answer 1

Why not use a modal JDialog here and not a JFrame. You probably shouldn't be coding directly to a JFrame (or JDialog) anyway but to a JPanel that can be placed on the proper root container of choice (which again here is a JDialog). You can make your JPanel as complex as desired, then place it in the JDialog, make that dialog application modal, and when you show it via setVisible(true), the application will halt at that point until the dialog has been dealt with.