What is java.awt.Component.getName() and setName() used for?

Question

What is java.awt.Component.getName() used for? It always seems to be null in the applications I build with NetBeans. I\'m thinking of storing some help text p

Answer 1

I haven't seen it used for anything by the framework. Its useful if you have components being passed in to a method so you can ask their name to decide how to handle them. Also, many UI testing frameworks use this to allow you to refer to the components by name in the testing scripts. I don't see any reason you can't use it for help text though.