Thread: JComponent background colour

Hey all, long time no see ;p

Having not done any Java2D in many months now, I thought it was about time I got stuck right in.

I know that you can set the background colour for a content pane easily through methods such as frame.getContentPane().setBackground(Color.BLACK), but as soon as I wanted to make my own custom content pane, contentpane.setBackground never seemed to work. Blissfully unaware of the reasons for it, the only way I've seemed able to get a background colour illusion to work is using the demonstration code below, where I simply draw a rectangle to cover the content pane.

public class ContentPane extends JComponent {
 
    public ContentPane() {
        setBackground(Color.PINK);
    }
 
    @Override
    public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
        super.paintComponent(g);
        g.setColor(getBackground());
        g.fillRect(0, 0, getWidth(), getHeight());
        Graphics2D g2d = (Graphics2D) g;
 
        //Begin drawing
    }
 
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        JFrame gui = new JFrame("Window Title");
        ContentPane cp = new ContentPane();
 
        gui.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        gui.setSize(800, 600);
        gui.setResizable(false);
        gui.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
 
        gui.setContentPane(cp);
        gui.setVisible(true);
    }
}

Simply, what I'm asking is if there are any "formal" ways to do this; i.e. is there a way to get setBackground to work on a custom set CP? as without

g.setColor(getBackground());
g.fillRect(0, 0, getWidth(), getHeight());

is just doesn't work.

- Late night question of the week done! :3

By default, JComponents are not opaque, meaning that their backgrounds aren't painted. You can get around this by calling setOpaque(true) or by extending JPanel instead.

Hey Kevin.
I read that last night too, but when I called it in the constructor, it still doesn't paint the background.

Update: Found a thread on Oracle's forums, and assuming the poster has his facts correct, it seems the implementation I set myself might be the way forward.

JComponent doesn't do any custom painting, (not even the background) so you need to provide your own painting for the background.
Or, extend a JPanel instead to take advantage of its background painting support.

Source: https://forums.oracle.com/forums/thr...readID=1351373

Then I guess I was slightly wrong- not only are JComponents not opaque by default, but they can't be opaque at all. Extend JPanel instead.

From the JComponent API:

setBackground(Color bg):
"Sets the background color of this component. The background color is used only if the component is opaque, and only by subclasses of JComponent or ComponentUI implementations. Direct subclasses of JComponent must override paintComponent to honor this property."

Ah right! Don't know how I missed that last night ;p

Will stick with the JComponent implementation providing my own background in any case.
Thanks Kevin.