New to JButtons, how to make them preform an event?

Question

Basically, what I have are 2 arrays. One array of JButton s 26 long, one array of String s with each letter of the alphabet, and a for loop to create a button for each letter of the alphabet and insert it into the JButton array:

JButton[] buttons = new JButton[26];
String  letters[]{"A","B","C","D","E","F","G","H","I","J","K","L","M","N","O","P","Q","R","S","T","U","V","W","X","Y","Z"};

for(int i = 0; i < buttons.length; i++){
  buttons[i] = new JButton(letters[i]);
  panel.add(buttons[i]);
}

What I want to do is create an event for all the buttons. Whenever a button is pressed, whatever letter it coincides with will be set as the value for a String called guess.

So far I understand that I need to do something like this:

x.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
  public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e){
    //Insert what I want to happen
  }
});

My problem is with where I wrote x. I am not sure what to put there. I need this to work for all 26 buttons in the array...

Sorry if this seems obvious/simple. I am obviously new to java and I just don't understand how JButton s work and how to do this.

Answer 1

Define an ActionListener like shown below.

ActionListener aListener = new ActionListener() {
    @Override
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event){             
         //find the actioncommand and do what is required.
    }
};

Associate this ActionListener to every button.

 for(int i = 0; i < buttons.length; i++){
        buttons[i] = new JButton(letters[i]);
        buttons[i].setActionCommand(letters[i]);
        buttons[i].addActionListener(aListener);
        panel.add(buttons[i]);
 }

Answer 2

Just test the actionCommand which is a String value and compare it with a the letter, and do something.

 x.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e){
        if (e.getActionCommand().equals("A")
            // do something
        else if (e.getActionCommand().equals("B")
            // do soemthing
        ...
        ...
    }
});

I prefer to use a switch though for cases like this.

public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e){
    String letter = e.getActionCommand();

    switch(letter) {
        case "A" : do something; break;
        case "B" : do something; break;
        case "C" : do something; break;
        ...
        ...
    }    
}