Java GridBagLayout

Question

I've been tasked with designing a basic UI in Java using Swing but I'm stuck with laying it out. I want to create something similar to this but my attempts at using GridBagLayout have resulted in something very messy. Can anyone offer some tips on how I can lay out my GUI like this?

I have a JTabbedPane to which I add two tabs, and to each of those two tabs I add a JPanel containing my controls.

Answer 1

I would recommend that

• the overall GUI use BorderLayout,
• the JTable be in a JScrollPane and this should be placed BorderLayout.CENTER.
• The top JPanel holding labels, fields, and buttons be placed BorderLayout.PAGE_START.
• The top JPanel also can use BorderLayout and can hold the buttons in the BorderLayout.PAGE_END position.
• The buttons would be held by a GridLayout(1, 0, x, 0) using JPanel where x is the gap between buttons
• The labels and JTextFields be in a JPanel that uses GridBagLayout and that is placed in the top JPanel in the BorderLayout.CENTER position.
• that you not follow these recommendations blindly but instead that you experiment with and play with different combinations of nested JPanels, each using its own layout.
• that you also check out this link

Answer 2

Here's what I would recommend:

• Use a JPanel pTextBox with GridLayout(3, 2) to hold all of your labels + textboxes
• Use a JPanel pButtons with GridLayout(1, 3) or BoxLayout(horizontal) hold all of your buttons
• Use a JPanel pAll with BoxLayout(vertical) to hold pTextBox, pButtons and the Table.
• Use struts, glues, and min/max/prefererd sizes to adjust spacing / resizing behaviour.

Also check out: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/layout/visual.html to compare exactly what you are looking for.