Dynamic text box in Java

how do I make a text box which the user can inser开发者_开发知识库t text into, then that text can be saved to some variable?

JTextField is probably the class you are looking for.

JTextField textField = new JTextField();
yourPanel.add(textField);

This will add the textField into your JPanel. Then at any point in your code where you have a handle to your textField, call getText(); of your JTextField.

String s = textField.getText();

See this tutorial for a better reference:

http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/index.html

A JTextField or JTextArea will do what you are asking for, but you'll need either a button or a listener to actually know when to save this to a String.

javax.swing is Event based, which means that you cannot extract the text like this:

JTextField myField = new JTextField();

//wait for user input

String s = myField.getText(); //not guaranteed to work!

Instead, you may want to make a "Submit" button that will send the text to your program when it is clicked:

http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/components/button.html