Thread: GUI Application problem! HELP Please!

Hi, I have alot of confusion with a program I am supposed to write. The GUI App is supposed to take information from the user, that information is: Number of days on trip, amount of airfare, amount of car rental fees, amount of miles driven if only driven in private car, amount of parking fees, amount of taxi charges, conference or seminar registration fees, and lodging charges.

Now the companies reimbursement policy is as follows:
37$ per day for meals
up to 10$ dollars a day for parking fees
up to 20 $ a day for taxi charges
up to 95$ dollars a day for lodging
and .27$ per mile driven.

Now here is what I am supposed to calculate:

Total expenses by the business person
total allowable expenses for the trip(what the company will reimburse for trip depending on how many days it was)
the excess amount that must be paid by business person if there is any
the amount saved by business person if the expenses are under the total amount allowed

The first problems I am having is getting a label on the JTextField components so the user knows where to enter each specified information.

The Second problem I have is actually executing all of the calculations i need to do. My teacher has not gone over any of this in the form of performing the calculations, just the basics on how to set up a basic GUI APP.

Here is what i have so far:


package Travel_Expenses;
import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
public class Expenses extends JFrame {
private JTextField days;
private JLabel messageLabel;
private JTextField airfare;
private JTextField fees;
private JTextField miles;
private JTextField parkfees;
private JTextField taxi;
private JTextField regfees;
private JTextField lodg;
private JPanel panel;

public static void main(String[] args) {
JFrame frame = new Expenses();
}
public Expenses(){

// call set methods to customize frame
setTitle( "Expenses");
setSize( 400, 200);
setLocation( 500, 300 );
setDefaultCloseOperation(EXIT_ON_CLOSE);

// call buildPanel() method and add panel to frame
buildPanel();
add(panel);

// display the frame
setVisible( true );

}
private void buildPanel() {

// Instantiate panel and GUI Components
panel = new JPanel();
messageLabel=new JLabel("How Many days was the trip");
days = new JTextField(10);
airfare = new JTextField(10);
fees= new JTextField(10);
miles = new JTextField(10);
parkfees = new JTextField(10);
taxi = new JTextField(10);
regfees = new JTextField(10);
lodg = new JTextField(10);
panel.add(messageLabel);
panel.add( days );
panel.add( airfare);
panel.add( fees );
panel.add( miles );
panel.add( parkfees );
panel.add( taxi );
panel.add( regfees );
panel.add( lodg );
}
}

Thank you for your reply. I am still confused on how to align the JLabel to a JTextField. I was wondering if you could show me example. It seems i have to put all of these fields in a Layout to create and organize the GUI application.

Thanks