What is the ActionListener.getSource for keyboard keys?

Question

Hello,
I am building a small game where you move something in a JFrame by pressing the up/down/left/right arrow keys on your keyboard.
I presume I take care of this with eventhandling. I can sort of understand this topic because I use it with buttons. Then it goes like this:
ActionEventHandler event = new ActionEventHandler();
startButton.addActionListener( event );
exitButton.addActionListener( event );and
private class ActionEventHandler implements ActionListener
    public void actionPerformed( ActionEvent e )
      if ( e.getSource() == startButton )
        Application.game();
      else if ( e.getSource() == exitButton )
        Application.exit();     
  }Now can I just add more if statements to this to test for keyboard strokes? If so, how do I program this? If you can help me, please be as specific as possible because I am pretty new to the game and most of the solutions I get from these boards I cannot use, because I don't know where to use them or how....
Thank you!

Answer 1

I would use the KeyListener. It has three methods, keyPressed, keyReleased and keyTyped. For a game, I believe you are only interested in the first two. You can then from the KeyEvent find out what keys and modifiers are pressed and released.