Thread: Menu of Menus Help

Hey.. I'm taking a computer science class in my high school and it's time to work on our "final project"... I've had this idea to create a POS (Point of Sale) System that a company could use whether it be a restaurant or store of some kind. I'm going to want this program to keep inventory of objects, print chits, and place orders (which will be kind of like putting the chit together?)

I guess an order will be a class.. And the PrintChit will outfile a receipt or something..
I guess it an addItem method could add whatever the item is to an ArrayList which would store the order.

My real question is basically how to create the menu system..

I want the outer menu to maybe be a login.. Inside I want the store functions (see below)
If I can't do a login.. I want to have an outer screen which will have n number of buttons with store functions (ie. See Open Orders, create new order, close order, Inventory, Total Sales for Compilation, maybe add user function for login)

I need to create a window with a series of JButtons.. I want to be able to have this window (lets call it a menu) be able to open sub menus (perhaps in the same window?) with an actionListener.. The logic behind it is simple.. I'm not too sure the coding is... Maybe if someone could craft a basic example for me? Or at least give me a place to learn or some instructions.. I would be extremely helpful! Thank you to anyone in advance!

Strivelli

What code do you have so far?

I haven't written any code yet.. I really can't do much until I figure out how to link the menus.. Building windows with JButtons that store different kinds of data I can do.. It's the mechanics and coding behind linking 2 windows that would usually be separate, together by clicking the JButton..

I really can't do much until I figure out how to link the menus

Not sure what LINK Menus means. Can you explain what that means?

Sure.. Hmmmm. I guess here's an example.. I'll explain this and try to think of a better one. Imagine you are on a windows computer, or a Mac.. Either way.. You go to your desktop and you click on a folder. That opens a window (the contents of the folder). Lets say that folder has 9 folders in it. In each of those folders that are more folders. Everytime you click a folder (similar to a JButton) you continue down the hierarchy of the folder system. That's basically what I want. A window.. It'll have 2 buttons. You click one of em, and that goes to a new window with more buttons. Eventually you will reach an end and need a button to go back through the "menus". I need to know how to program buttons to respond like that. To open a new window of buttons... Maybe in the same window? Or... Over the same window?

Understand?

click one of em, and that goes to a new window

Have the event processing code for the button click create a new JFrame and populate it as usual.
Or do you want to replace what is in the current window with new content?

Originally Posted by Norm

Have the event processing code for the button click create a new JFrame and populate it as usual.
Or do you want to replace what is in the current window with new content?

I would prefer having it replace the existing content in current window with new contents... Otherwise, I don't know why I didn't think to do it that way. Here's another question... Where would you store the information for this system, so that say you wanted to "add an item" into the system through the UI as opposed to the code.. where would you store the data that would be used to construct the UI? In a local text file to be updated?

To change what's shown in a window, see the Cardlayout or the JTabbedPane classes

And for the storage of the window contents?

What contents? There are text components, and selected menuitems and checkboxes and ...
Create variables of the appropriate type and copy the contents of the window's components to those variables.