J2SE: Cut/Copy/Paste Helper

July 9, 2010 by Michael

You wouldn’t think that having a standard edit menü with Cut, Copy and Paste buttons would be much of a problem in the J2SE world, especially regarding the fact that most standard Swing components have TransferHandlers that support the 3 operations with the standard keyboard shortcuts.

First try was to user TransferHandler.getCopyAction() etc. and create menuitems from the actions. The actions will actually be called but they use the source of the action event to determine the component whose contents should be transfered.

After some searching i found this tutorial. The idea is to have a global property change handler on the global KeyboardFocusManager that tracks the current component that has the focus. The handler than updates the 3 actions with the new target.

I have changed the code a little bit. I removed the methods for adding special client parameters to determine whether cut/copy/paste should be enabled completely. Instead i check whether the component has a TransferHandler installed and if so, whether that handler supports the current action. By doing so my actions have the same behavior like the ones that are the swing components have.

The following code can be used to create menuitems or buttons that mimic the default cut/copy/paste actions on Swing components:

import java.awt.Component;
import java.awt.KeyboardFocusManager;
import java.awt.Toolkit;
import java.awt.datatransfer.Clipboard;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.InputEvent;
import java.awt.event.KeyEvent;
import java.beans.PropertyChangeEvent;
import java.beans.PropertyChangeListener;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
 
import javax.swing.AbstractAction;
import javax.swing.Action;
import javax.swing.JComponent;
import javax.swing.KeyStroke;
import javax.swing.TransferHandler;
 
public final class CutCopyPasteHelper {
	private static final FocusedAction CUT_INSTANCE;
	private static final FocusedAction COPY_INSTANCE;
	private static final FocusedAction PASTE_INSTANCE;
 
	private static final Clipboard CLIPBOARD;
 
	private static final List<FocusedAction> FOCUSED_ACTIONS = new ArrayList<FocusedAction>();
 
	static {
		Clipboard clipboard;
		try {
			clipboard = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getSystemClipboard();
		} catch (SecurityException e) {
			// Don't have access to the clipboard, create a new one
			clipboard = new Clipboard("Sandboxed Clipboard");
		}
		CLIPBOARD = clipboard;
 
		FOCUSED_ACTIONS.add(CUT_INSTANCE = new CutAction());
		FOCUSED_ACTIONS.add(COPY_INSTANCE = new CopyAction());
		FOCUSED_ACTIONS.add(PASTE_INSTANCE = new PasteAction());		
		KeyboardFocusManager.getCurrentKeyboardFocusManager().addPropertyChangeListener(new PropertyChangeHandler());
	}
 
	private static Clipboard getClipboard() {
		return CLIPBOARD;
	}
 
	/**
	 * Returns an action to perform a cut operation.
	 *
	 * @return the cut action
	 */
	public static Action getCutAction() {
		return CUT_INSTANCE;
	}
 
	/**
	 * Returns an action to perform a copy operation.
	 *
	 * @return the copy action
	 */
	public static Action getCopyAction() {
		return COPY_INSTANCE;
	}
 
	/**
	 * Returns an action to perform a paste operation.
	 *
	 * @return the paste action
	 */
	public static Action getPasteAction() {
		return PASTE_INSTANCE;
	}
 
	private static void updateActions(Component focusedComponent) {
		for(FocusedAction action : FOCUSED_ACTIONS)						
			action.update(focusedComponent);					
	}
 
	private static final class PropertyChangeHandler implements PropertyChangeListener {
		public void propertyChange(PropertyChangeEvent e) {
			if (e.getPropertyName() == "permanentFocusOwner") {
				updateActions((Component)e.getNewValue());
			}
		}
	}
 
	private CutCopyPasteHelper() {
	}
 
 
	private static abstract class FocusedAction extends AbstractAction {        
		private static final long serialVersionUID = 9134168335741527777L;		
		protected JComponent focusedComponent;
 
		public FocusedAction(String name) {
			super(name);
		}		
 
		protected void update(Component permanentFocusOwner) {
			this.focusedComponent = (permanentFocusOwner instanceof JComponent) ? (JComponent)permanentFocusOwner : null; 			
			this.checkTarget();
		}
 
		public JComponent getFocusedComponent() {
			return focusedComponent;
		}		
 
		public boolean actionSupported(int actionMap, int action) {	
			return (actionMap & action) != 0;
		}
 
		abstract protected void checkTarget();	
	}
 
	protected static void export(final int exportAction, final JComponent component) {
		final Clipboard clipboard = getClipboard();		
		component.getTransferHandler().exportToClipboard(component, clipboard, exportAction);
	}
 
	private static final class CopyAction extends FocusedAction {		
		private static final long serialVersionUID = 1765740238724009255L;
 
		public CopyAction() {
			super("Kopieren");	
			super.setEnabled(false);
			super.putValue(ACTION_COMMAND_KEY, "a6f9f030-c408-4531-857f-dd3aad7b43f6");
			super.putValue(ACCELERATOR_KEY, KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(KeyEvent.VK_C, InputEvent.CTRL_DOWN_MASK));
		}
 
		@Override
		public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {			
			export(TransferHandler.COPY, focusedComponent);
		}
 
		@Override
		public void checkTarget() {
			super.setEnabled(focusedComponent != null && focusedComponent.getTransferHandler()!= null && actionSupported(focusedComponent.getTransferHandler().getSourceActions(focusedComponent), TransferHandler.COPY));
		}		
	}
 
	private static final class CutAction extends FocusedAction {		
		private static final long serialVersionUID = 1765740238724009255L;
 
		public CutAction() {
			super("Ausschneiden");	
			super.setEnabled(false);
			super.putValue(ACTION_COMMAND_KEY, "aa33f95a-c741-407a-a0ca-0c3aedd33c4d");
			super.putValue(ACCELERATOR_KEY, KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(KeyEvent.VK_X, InputEvent.CTRL_DOWN_MASK));
		}
 
		@Override
		public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {			
			export(TransferHandler.MOVE, focusedComponent);
		}
 
		@Override
		public void checkTarget() {
			super.setEnabled(focusedComponent != null && focusedComponent.getTransferHandler()!= null && actionSupported(focusedComponent.getTransferHandler().getSourceActions(focusedComponent), TransferHandler.MOVE));
		}		
	}
 
 
	private static final class PasteAction extends FocusedAction {		
		private static final long serialVersionUID = -2117467682323608417L;
 
		public PasteAction() {
			super("Einfügen");	
			super.setEnabled(false);
			super.putValue(ACTION_COMMAND_KEY, "2676413d-8b9e-4d64-b59a-800db6747d80");
			super.putValue(ACCELERATOR_KEY, KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(KeyEvent.VK_V, InputEvent.CTRL_DOWN_MASK));
		}
 
		public void checkTarget() {			
			super.setEnabled(focusedComponent != null && focusedComponent.getTransferHandler() != null && focusedComponent.getTransferHandler().canImport(focusedComponent, getClipboard().getAvailableDataFlavors()));			
		}
 
		public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
			Clipboard clipboard = getClipboard();
			JComponent target = getFocusedComponent();
			target.getTransferHandler().importData(target, clipboard.getContents(null));
		}		
	}
}

What’s missing: The actions aren’t localized and they use Ctrl+? on every system. One could use the default Swing bundles to determine the correct modifier.

2 comments

  1. Snx wrote:

    can you explain the magic numbers like “a6f9f030-c408-4531-857f-dd3aad7b43f6”?

    Posted on November 16, 2010 at 8:22 AM | Permalink
  2. Michael wrote:

    Hi,
    those are just some randomly generated GUIDs that i use for unique action command keys. They have no further meaning in this context than beeing unique.

    Posted on November 16, 2010 at 8:39 AM | Permalink
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