A Swing question about readable control-flow

From:
Leo Breebaart <leo@lspace.org>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
23 Jul 2008 12:11:44 GMT
Message-ID:
<6eolg0F852nuU1@mid.individual.net>
I have a control-flow issue I was hoping to get some advice on.

In my Swing GUI, I have a button. If I click on that button, I
want, via its associated Action, but, and this is the kicker:
*depending on a certain condition*, to show and process the
results of a modal JDialog *before* I perform the actual action.
But the action should always run. It's just the showing of the
dialog that is dependent on outside context.

How I would *like* to implement this:

    public class MyAction extends AbstractAction
    {
        
        public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
        {
            if (hasQuestionnaire)
                showQuestionnaire();
            
            doStuff();
        }

        private void showQuestionnaire()
        {
            final QuestionnaireDialog dialog = new QuestionnaireDialog();
            dialog.setVisible(true);
            dialog.getCancelButton().addActionListener(new ActionListener()
                {
                    @Override
                    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
                    {
                        dialog.setVisible(false);
                            // process cancel
                    }
                });
            dialog.getSubmitButton().addActionListener(new ActionListener()
                {
                    @Override
                    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
                    {
                        dialog.setVisible(false);
                            // process submit
                    }
                });
        }
    }

This does not work, because the showQuestionnaire method will put
up the dialog without blocking, causing 'doStuff' to be executed
immediately afterwards, without waiting for the dialog to be
dismissed.

I can solve the issue by moving the doStuff() call into both of
the dialog's registered ActionListeners, *and* by placing the
MyAction's doStuff() call into an else-branch of the
if-statement, but all that multiplication of code (even if it's
just a single line) smells very wrong to me. It makes the actual
control flow a lot more difficult to follow.

Am I missing something simple? Does anybody have any advice on
how they would implement this cleanly?

Many thanks in advance,

--
Leo Breebaart <leo@lspace.org>

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