How to Build a Robust and Resizable Swing-Based Chess GUI?

Making a Robust, Resizable Swing Chess GUI

This article discusses the design and implementation of a robust, resizable Swing-based Chess GUI. The specifications outlined by the User Design Team call for:

• A toolbar with buttons for common game actions
• An area reserved for future use
• A chess board that remains square while filling the available space
• Keyboard accessibility and focus indicators for chess pieces

Implementation Details

The following techniques were employed to achieve the desired functionality:

• Panel for Chess Board: A 9x9 GridLayout is used to create the chess board, with the first cell reserved for a label without text.
• Separate Button Array: To simplify game logic, an 8x8 array of buttons is maintained separately.
• Buttons for Keyboard Functionality: Buttons are used for chess board squares, enabling keyboard and mouse interactions. Margin removal allows them to shrink to the icon size.
• GridBagLayout for Square Board: The chess board is added to a GridBagLayout as the only component without specified constraints, centering it. To maintain square dimensions, the chess board queries the parent component's size and returns a preferred size that is the largest possible square while not exceeding the smaller width or height of the parent.
• Images for Chess Pieces: Images for the chess pieces are obtained and stored in a two-dimensional array.

Sample Code

The following code snippet demonstrates the initialization of the chess board and chess piece images:

for (int ii = 0; ii < 8; ii++) {
    for (int jj = 0; jj < 8; jj++) {
        chessBoardSquares[ii][jj] = new JButton();
        // Remove button margin to allow shrinking to icon size
        chessBoardSquares[ii][jj].setMargin(new Insets(0, 0, 0, 0));
        chessBoardSquares[ii][jj].setIcon(new ImageIcon(
                new BufferedImage(64, 64, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB)));
        if ((jj % 2 == 1 &amp;&amp; ii % 2 == 1)
                || (jj % 2 == 0 &amp;&amp; ii % 2 == 0)) {
            chessBoardSquares[ii][jj].setBackground(Color.WHITE);
        } else {
            chessBoardSquares[ii][jj].setBackground(Color.BLACK);
        }
    }
}

createImages();

The above is the detailed content of How to Build a Robust and Resizable Swing-Based Chess GUI?. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!