writing to JTextArea from another object

[Jarwulf]

Hi, Java Eclipse windows

I have a calling class and a class that converts a file. I want to call the file converting class and do a conversion. While thats happening I want to print a number indicating progress in the jTextArea of the calling class...so

class Object 1 {

public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
{
InnerObject.doStuff(OuterFile, txtArea);
}
}


public static File doStuff(File InnerFile, JTextArea InnerTextArea)
{
  try {
                  
                  
                while (somecondition) {


                        //Do converting stuff here

                  
                        convertstepcounter2=convertstepcounter;
                        Integer.toString(convertstepcounter2);
                        InnerTextArea.append(""+convertstepcounter2 + "\n");
                        InnerTextArea.setCaretPosition(InnerTextArea.getText().length());
                        convertstepcounter++;
                }
          
                }
                catch(IOException ie){
                        ie.printStackTrace();
                   }
          
               

                return convertedFile;
}

I get nothing, probably since you have to exit the while loop to print a message. Would there be a solution to this problem so I can get a counting txtArea while in InnerObject?

Thanks

[keang]

It's probably not updating the text area until the method returns because Swing is single threaded and I guess you are running the method on the Event Queue Dispatch thread.

When performing this sort of task you should use a javax.swing.SwingWorker. The API docs have usage examples alternatively look at the Java tutorials