Is there a getComponentShape() method for Java Swing/ AWT?

Question

I'm just stepping into this huge world of designing graphic UIs, so please be patient.

I went through (some of) the (vast) documentation on the official website and I just wanted to know if there was a method that told me the shape of my JComponent.

When I do getBounds it says rectangle, does this refer to my shape?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

AWT's class Component and Swing's class JComponent don't have the concept of arbitrary shapes, they just have a rectangular shape. That's why JComponent 's method getBounds returns a Rectangle which is just a special case of the Shape interface.

Only class java.awt.Window has getShape and setShape methods, and of course all its subclasses ( Dialog , Frame , JWindow , JDialog , JFrame , ...) also have. May be this is what you need.