drawing simple rectangles on a Jframe in java

Question

I am extending JFrame like this:

public GameFrame() {
    this.setBounds(30, 30, 500, 500);
    this.setDefaultCloseOperation(EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
    initializeSquares();
}

private void initializeSquares(){
    for(int i = 0; i < 5; i++){
        this.getContentPane().add(new Square(i*10, i*10, 100, 100));
    }
    this.setVisible(true);
}

However, only one square is being drawn on the screen, does anybody know why?

also My Square class looks like this:

private int x;
private int y;
private int width;
private int height;
public Square(int x, int y, int width, int height){
    this.x = x;
    this.y = y;
    this.width = width;
    this.height = height;
}

@Override
public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
    super.paintComponent(g);
    g.drawRect(x, y, width, height);
}

Solution 1

The JFrame's contentPane uses BorderLayout by default. When you add a Square to it, it gets added by default BorderLayout.CENTER and covers up any previously added Squares. You will want to read up on all the layout managers available to Swing GUI's.

For e.g., start here: Laying Out Components within a Container

But having said this, I would do things differently. I would create just one JPanel and make it able to paint multiple squares. For example something like so:

import java.awt.Dimension;
import java.awt.Graphics;
import java.awt.Graphics2D;
import java.awt.Rectangle;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

import javax.swing.*;

public class GameFrame extends JFrame {
   public GameFrame() {
      super("Game Frame");
      setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
      Squares squares = new Squares();
      getContentPane().add(squares);
      for (int i = 0; i < 15; i++) {
         squares.addSquare(i * 10, i * 10, 100, 100);
      }

      pack();
      setLocationRelativeTo(null);
      setVisible(true);

   }

   public static void main(String[] args) {
      new GameFrame();
   }

}

class Squares extends JPanel {
   private static final int PREF_W = 500;
   private static final int PREF_H = PREF_W;
   private List<Rectangle> squares = new ArrayList<Rectangle>();

   public void addSquare(int x, int y, int width, int height) {
      Rectangle rect = new Rectangle(x, y, width, height);
      squares.add(rect);
   }

   @Override
   public Dimension getPreferredSize() {
      return new Dimension(PREF_W, PREF_H);
   }

   @Override
   protected void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
      super.paintComponent(g);
      Graphics2D g2 = (Graphics2D) g;
      for (Rectangle rect : squares) {
         g2.draw(rect);
      }
   }

}

Solution 2

Fo absolute positioning, call setLayout(null). Then the icons will be drawed at the position returned by their getLocation() method, so you might want to call the setLocation() first.