How to add action listener that listens to multiple buttons

Question

I\'m trying to figure out what i am doing wrong with action listeners. I\'m following multiple tutorials and yet netbeans and eclipse are giving me errors when im trying to

Answer 1

There are good answers here but let me address the more global point of adding action listener that listens to multiple buttons.

There are two popular approaches.

Using a Common Action Listener

You can get the source of the action in your actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) implementation:

JButton button1, button2; //your button

@Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {

    JButton actionSource = (JButton) e.getSource();

    if(actionSource.equals(button1)){
        // YOU BUTTON 1 CODE HERE
    } else if (actionSource.equals(button2)) {
        // YOU BUTTON 2 CODE HERE
    }
}

Using ActionCommand

With this approach you setting the actionCommand field of your button which later will allow you to use switch:

button1.setActionCommand("actionName1");
button2.setActionCommand("actionName2");

And later:

@Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
    String actionCommand = ((JButton) e.getSource()).getActionCommand();

    switch (actionCommand) {
        case "actionName1": 
            // YOU BUTTON 1 CODE HERE
        break;
        case "actionName2": 
            // YOU BUTTON 2 CODE HERE
        break;
    }
}

Check out to learn more about JFrame Buttons, Listeners and Fields.