Create a plain message box that disappears after a few seconds in Java

I wonder what is the best approach to make a JOptionPane style plain message box disappear after being displayed for a set amount of seconds.

I am thinking to fire up a separate thread (which uses a timer) from the main GUI thread to do this, so that the main GUI can carry on processing other events etc. But how do I actually make the message box in this separate thread disappear and terminate the thread properly. Thanks.

Edit: so this is what I come up with by following the solutions posted below

package util;

import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.Dimension;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;

import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JLabel;
import javax.swing.SwingConstants;
import javax.swing.Timer;

public class DisappearingMessage implements ActionListener
{
    private final int ONE_SECOND = 1000;

    private Timer timer;
    private JFrame frame;
    private JLabel msgLabel;

public DisappearingMessage (String str, int seconds) 
{
frame = new JFrame ("Test Message");
msgLabel = new JLabel (str, SwingConstants.CENTER);
msgLabel.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(600, 400));

timer = new Timer (this.ONE_SECOND * seconds, this);
// only need to fire up once to make the 开发者_如何学JAVAmessage box disappear
timer.setRepeats(false);
}

/**
 * Start the timer
 */
public void start ()
{
// make the message box appear and start the timer
frame.getContentPane().add(msgLabel, BorderLayout.CENTER);
frame.pack();
frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null); 
frame.setVisible(true);

timer.start();
}

/**
 * Handling the event fired by the timer
 */
public void actionPerformed (ActionEvent event)
{
// stop the timer and kill the message box
timer.stop();
frame.dispose();
}

public static void main (String[] args)
{
DisappearingMessage dm = new DisappearingMessage("Test", 5);
dm.start();
}
}

Now the question is that, as i cam going to create multiple instances of this class throughout the course of the interaction between the user and the main GUI, I wonder whether the dispose() method cleans up everything properly every time. Otherwise, I may end up with accumulating lots of redundant objects in memory. thanks.

I think in your situation, you can't use any of JOptionPane static methods (showX...). You have to create a JOptionPane instance instead, then create a JDialog from it and show that JDialog yourself. Once you have JDialog, you can force its visibility.

// Replace JOptionPane.showXxxx(args) with new JOptionPane(args)
JOptionPane pane = new JOptionPane(...);
final JDialog dialog = pane.createDialog("title");
Timer timer = new Timer(DELAY, new ActionListener() {
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
        dialog.setVisible(false);
        // or maybe you'll need dialog.dispose() instead?
    }
});
timer.setRepeats(false);
timer.start();
dialog.setVisible(true);

I haven't tried it so I can't guarantee that it works but I think it should ;-)

Of course, here Timer is javax.swing.Timer, as someone else already mentioned, thus you're sure the action will run in the EDT and you won't have any problem with creating or terminating your own Thread.

Timers have their own threads. I think what you probably should do is create a new Timer (or, preferably, make one that you reuse till you don't need it any more), schedule a task that will ask for the message box to disappear and then have that task add another task to the event queue, which will remove the message box.

There might be a better way though.

In addition: Yes, using javax.swing.timer would probably be better. The reason I talk about using two tasks in the above is that I assume you will have to execute your hiding method inside of the AWT thread to avoid certain subtle race issues that might arise. If you use javax.swing.Timer you're already executing in the AWT thread, so that point becomes moot.