Event Handling in JAVA

 Event handling is fundamental to Java programming because it is integral to the creation of  GUI-based programs. Furthermore, any program that uses a graphical user interface, such as a Java application written for Windows, is event driven. Thus, you cannot write these types of programs without a solid command of event handling. Events are supported by a number of packages, including java.util, java.awt, and java.awt.event. Most events to which your program will respond are generated when the user interacts with a GUI-based program. They are passed to your program in a variety of ways, with the specific method dependent upon the actual event. There are several types of events, including those generated by the mouse, the keyboard, and various GUI controls, such as a push button, scroll bar, or check box.

The Delegation Event Model

The modern approach to handling events is based on the delegation event model, which defines standard and consistent mechanisms to generate and process events. Its concept is quite simple: a source generates an event and sends it to one or more listeners. In this scheme, the listener simply waits until it receives an event. Once an event is received, the listener processes the event and then returns. The advantage of this design is that the application logic that processes events is cleanly separated from the user interface logic that generates those events. A user interface element is able to “delegate” the processing of an event to a separate piece of code. In the delegation event model, listeners must register with a source in order to receive an event notification. This provides an important benefit: notifications are sent only to listeners that want to receive them. This is a more efficient way to handle events than the design used by the old Java 1.0 approach. Previously, an event was propagated up the containment hierarchy until it was handled by a component. This required components to receive events that they did not process, and it wasted valuable time. The delegation event model eliminates this overhead.

Note: Event here is actual object of particular Event.

Events

In the delegation model, an event is an object that describes a state change in a source. It can be generated as a consequence of a person interacting with the elements in a graphical user interface. Some of the activities that cause events to be generated are pressing a button, entering a character via the keyboard, selecting an item in a list, and clicking the mouse. Many other user operations could also be cited as examples. Events may also occur that are not directly caused by interactions with a user interface. For example, an event may be generated when a timer expires, a counter exceeds a value, a software or hardware failure occurs, or an operation is completed. You are free to define events that are appropriate for your application. 

Event Sources

A source is an object that generates an event. This occurs when the internal state of that object changes in some way. Sources may generate more than one type of event. A source must register listeners in order for the listeners to receive notifications about a specific type of event. Each type of event has its own registration method. 

Here is the general form: public void addTypeListener(TypeListener el) 

Here, Type is the name of the event, and el is a reference to the event listener. For example, the method that registers a keyboard event listener is called addKeyListener( ). The method that registers a mouse motion listener is called addMouseMotionListener( ). When an event occurs, all registered listeners are notified and receive a copy of the event object. This is known as multicasting the event. In all cases, notifications are sent only to listeners that register to receive them.

A source must also provide a method that allows a listener to unregister an interest in a specific type of event. 

The general form of such a method is this: public void removeTypeListener(TypeListener el)

Here, Type is the name of the event, and el is a reference to the event listener. For example, to remove a keyboard listener, you would call removeKeyListener( ). The methods that add or remove listeners are provided by the source that generates events. For example, the Component class provides methods to add and remove keyboard and mouse event listeners.

Event Listeners

A listener is an object that is notified when an event occurs. It has two major requirements. First, it must have been registered with one or more sources to receive notifications about specific types of events. Second, it must implement methods to receive and process these notifications. The methods that receive and process events are defined in a set of interfaces found in java.awt.event. For example, the MouseMotionListener interface defines two methods to receive notifications when the mouse is dragged or moved. Any object may receive and process one or both of these events if it provides an implementation of this interface.

Event Classes

The classes that represent events are at the core of Java’s event handling mechanism. Thus, a discussion of event handling must begin with the event classes. It is important to understand, however, that Java defines several types of events and that not all event classes can be discussed in this chapter. The most widely used events are those defined by the AWT and those defined by Swing. 

At the root of the Java event class hierarchy is EventObject, which is in java.util. It is the superclass for all events.

 Its one constructor is shown here: EventObject(Object src)

Here, src is the object that generates this event. EventObject contains two methods: getSource( ) and toString( ). The getSource( ) method returns the source of the event.

Its general form is shown here: Object getSource( ) 

As expected, toString( ) returns the string equivalent of the event.

The class AWTEvent, defined within the java.awt package, is a subclass of EventObject. It is the superclass (either directly or indirectly) of all AWT-based events used by the delegation event model. Its getID( ) method can be used to determine the type of the event.

The signature of this method is shown here: int getID( ) 

The package java.awt.event defines many types of events that are generated by various user interface elements.