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Message:

obtaining reference to JInternalFrame from sub-component

Posted by Dan Desch on January 14, 2002 at 4:52 PM

Greetings, I'm new to Java and this is my first post to this forum, so bear with me.

I am trying to implement a Multi Document Interface (MDI) using JInternalFrames (as prescribed). I have instances where I have JPanels loaded onto an internal frame and I need to obtain a reference to that parent internal frame within the context of my JPanel class. I've tried getParent (e.g. myJpanelClass.getParent()), but this does not return a reference to the JInternalFrame, but to a JPanel object. This doesn't make much sense to me--the parent of my JPanel is another JPanel? Or is this the content pane from the internal frame? The Java documentation is less than effusive on this subject.

I suppose I could work around this problem by passing a reference to the internal frame as a parameter in the constructor for my JPanel class, but this seems clumsy.

So, I guess I really have two concrete questions:

1. What is getParent() giving me, if not the internal frame?
2. If getParent() is not the right path to take, what is?

Thanks,
Dan Desch.