How to programmatically close a JFrame

Question

What\'s the correct way to get a JFrame to close, the same as if the user had hit the X close button, or pressed Alt+F4 (on W

Answer 1

Best way to close a Swing frame programmatically is to make it behave like it would when the "X" button is pressed. To do that you will need to implement WindowAdapter that suits your needs and set frame's default close operation to do nothing (DO_NOTHING_ON_CLOSE).

Initialize your frame like this:

private WindowAdapter windowAdapter = null;

private void initFrame() {

    this.windowAdapter = new WindowAdapter() {
        // WINDOW_CLOSING event handler
        @Override
        public void windowClosing(WindowEvent e) {
            super.windowClosing(e);
            // You can still stop closing if you want to
            int res = JOptionPane.showConfirmDialog(ClosableFrame.this, "Are you sure you want to close?", "Close?", JOptionPane.YES_NO_OPTION);
            if ( res == 0 ) {
                // dispose method issues the WINDOW_CLOSED event
                ClosableFrame.this.dispose();
            }
        }

        // WINDOW_CLOSED event handler
        @Override
        public void windowClosed(WindowEvent e) {
            super.windowClosed(e);
            // Close application if you want to with System.exit(0)
            // but don't forget to dispose of all resources 
            // like child frames, threads, ...
            // System.exit(0);
        }
    };

    // when you press "X" the WINDOW_CLOSING event is called but that is it
    // nothing else happens
    this.setDefaultCloseOperation(ClosableFrame.DO_NOTHING_ON_CLOSE);
    // don't forget this
    this.addWindowListener(this.windowAdapter);
}

You can close the frame programmatically by sending it the WINDOW_CLOSING event, like this:

WindowEvent closingEvent = new WindowEvent(targetFrame, WindowEvent.WINDOW_CLOSING);
Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getSystemEventQueue().postEvent(closingEvent);

This will close the frame like the "X" button was pressed.