How can I make my own mouseListener dispose of the current form?

Question

I want to have my own MouseListener created in another class. Easy to do. But I want it to destroy the current JFrame (close button) This is easy to do if you MouseListener is inside of the current class. But this is not what I want. I would like to make my own generic class that could be attached to any close button with -->

     new myMouseCloseListener({form instance probably will go here})

I know what the trouble is. I need to pass the class mouse listener a parameter that represents the current form. I have tried a couple of different things but it is not working.

I do not want to use a static variable.

Question: How do I pass a variable of the current form to the myMouseCloseListener(...)?

Code:

import java.awt.EventQueue;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.UIManager;
import javax.swing.border.EmptyBorder;
import javax.swing.JTextArea;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.Font;
import java.awt.event.MouseEvent;
import java.awt.event.MouseListener;

import javax.swing.JLabel;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;

public class RichTextBox extends JFrame {
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
    private JPanel MyPanel;
    static RichTextBox t;

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        t = new RichTextBox();
        t.setVisible(true);
    }

    public RichTextBox() {
        setResizable(false);
         try {
           UIManager.setLookAndFeel(UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName()); 
         } catch (Exception ex) { }
        setTitle("Personal Note Entry");
        setForeground(new Color(255, 192, 203));
        setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        setBounds(100, 100, 420, 266);
        MyPanel = new JPanel();
        MyPanel.setBorder(new EmptyBorder(5, 5, 5, 5));
        setContentPane(MyPanel);
        MyPanel.setLayout(null);

        JTextArea yourNote = new JTextArea();
        yourNote.setWrapStyleWord(true);
        yourNote.setToolTipText("This will allow the user to enter a personal note for a specific transaction if they wish.");
        yourNote.setText("Enter your note!");
        yourNote.setTabSize(5);
        yourNote.setLineWrap(true);
        yourNote.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 16));
        yourNote.setBackground(new Color(255, 248, 220));
        yourNote.setBounds(10, 45, 392, 147);
        MyPanel.add(yourNote);

        JButton btnClose = new JButton("Close");
        btnClose.addActionListener(new ActionListener(t)); 
        btnClose.setBounds(313, 203, 89, 23);
        //btnClose.addActionListener(new myMouseCloseListener(t));
        MyPanel.add(btnClose);

        JButton btnNewButton_1 = new JButton("Save");
        btnNewButton_1.setBounds(214, 203, 89, 23);
        MyPanel.add(btnNewButton_1);

        JLabel lblNewLabel = new JLabel("Please enter a personal note:");
        lblNewLabel.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 16));
        lblNewLabel.setToolTipText("Label name associated with the text box");
        lblNewLabel.setBackground(new Color(255, 0, 0));
        lblNewLabel.setBounds(10, 11, 202, 23);
        MyPanel.add(lblNewLabel);
    }
}

class myMouseCloseListener implements MouseListener {

    RichTextBox temp = null; <-- not sure here (trying different things)

    myMouseCloseListener(RichTextBox r) {
        this.temp = r;
    }

    @Override
    public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub

    }

    @Override
    public void mousePressed(MouseEvent e) {
        temp.dispose();

    }

    @Override
    public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub

    }

    @Override
    public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub

    }

    @Override
    public void mouseExited(MouseEvent e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub

    }

}

Error:

  Compile Error

   The method addActionListener(ActionListener) in the type 
   AbstractButton is not applicable for the arguments (myMouseCloseListener)

Answer 1

The error message clearly explains the problem. The method addActionListener(ActionListener) takes as its argument an ActionListener instance. You're passing in a MouseListener instance. If you want to pass in a MouseListener , you need to use addMouseListener(MouseListener) instead.

You also don't need to pass in the JFrame instance. Off the top of my head, may not compile, double-check yourself:

@Override
public void mousePressed(final MouseEvent e) {
    final Component source = e.getComponent();
    final JFrame frame = (JFrame) SwingUtilities.getRoot(source);
    frame.dispose();
}

Of course, it would be much easier to add an ActionListener instead of a MouseListener , because then you're only implementing one method. If you insist on using a MouseListener , I strongly suggest extending MouseAdapter so you only have to override the methods you care about.

Answer 2

Continued from @Eric Stein,

An example if this using anonymous inner classes, which may be a lot simpler than making a whole another class for it:

btnClose.addMouseListener(new MouseListener() {
    public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent me) {
         t.setVisible(false);
         t.dispose(); // If you want.
    }
    public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent me) {} // Other required impls for MouseListener
    public void mouseExited(MouseEvent me) {}
    public void mousePressed(MouseEvent me) {}
    public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent me) {}
});