Cant seem to set text in Event Handler

Question

I am fairly new to Java so I am probably missing something fundamental here but here goes.

I have a GUI with a button and I want to click on it, change the text in a window to something then perform a task

        connectButton.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
                public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent arg0) {
                    databaseConnectWindow.setText("Connecting...");
                    connectToDatabase();
                 }
        });

But with the code above the text in databaseConnectWindow does not change until after conectToDatabse has finished. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Use a SwingWorker for a background thread so you don't lock the GUI thread otherwise known as the event dispatch thread or EDT. For more on this, please check out Lesson: Concurrency in Swing

Answer 2

You're calling connectToDatabase() in the UI thread.
The UI isn't able to update until the UI thread is free.

You should connect to the database on a background thread.