Drawing a class that extends JPanel

Question

I have a class that extends JPanel, it contains a draw(Graphics page) method to draw itself.. if I am building a test driver and want to display it on the frame what should I use.. I'm confused between paint(), paintComponent(), getGraphics() etc..

The Class

class Car extends JPanel {

     void draw (Graphics page) {
         ....draw polygons...
     }

* EDIT *

The goal is to animate the car moving across the screen, I changed the draw method to 'paintComponent()' and it showed up! But it needs to move it and repaint it with a timer. So I guess painting it over and over again is the reason it's draw() not paintComponent(). ?

Answer 1

• paint()
  
  AWT containers (use Swing) & Swing top level containers such as JFrame & JApplet (don't paint in top level containers - add a JPanel or JComponent ). So basically, don't in this age change the method.
  
  
• paintComponent()
  
  The vast majority of Swing components.
  
  
• getGraphics()

BufferedImage (possibly being displayed in a JLabel ). That will provide a Graphics instance, but I prefer using createGraphics() for a Graphics2D instance (rendering hints are wonderful).