In Java, every time I add more than one thing to a JPanel, the second thing is not created?

Question

I create a JPanel and added a few simple buttons with listeners attached to them. Then I decided to add an Image to the background of my panel, so I switched my JPanel to an ImagePanel. The buttons were working on JPanel, but now that I added a bunch of code for the background image to be displayed, the buttons no longer show. I did not change of any of the button adding code so I'm very confused as to why the buttons no longer show. This also happened in my separate GameFrame class. I added 2 rectangle components to a panel, then 3 buttons. For that panel, only the buttons show, despite the rectangles working before the buttons were added. Can I only have one type of JComponent per panel or something? I really do not understand why it's doing this. Thank you for your time.

import java.awt.Dimension;
import java.awt.Graphics;
import java.awt.Image;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import javax.swing.ImageIcon;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JPanel;

public class TitleFrame extends JFrame
{
    private ImagePanel panel;
    private JButton mage;
    private JButton rogue;
    private JButton warrior;
    private Image image;

    public TitleFrame()
    {
        JFrame frame = new JFrame();

        frame.setSize(1024, 768);
        frame.setTitle("Title Screen");
        frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        frame.setVisible(true);

        createMageButton();
        createRogueButton();
        createWarriorButton();
        ImagePanel panel = new ImagePanel(new ImageIcon("C:/Users/Derek Reitz/Documents/Eclipse Projects/GameApp/src/background.jpg").getImage());
        panel.add(mage);
        panel.add(rogue);
        panel.add(warrior);
        panel.paintComponent(frame.getGraphics());
        frame.getContentPane().add(panel);
    }

    private void createRogueButton() {
        rogue = new JButton("Select Rogue");

        class AddButtonListener implements ActionListener
        {
            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event)
            {
                moveToNextFrame('r');
            }
        }

        ActionListener listener = new AddButtonListener();
        rogue.addActionListener(listener);
    }

    private void createWarriorButton() {
        warrior = new JButton("Select Warrior");

        class AddButtonListener implements ActionListener
        {
            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event)
            {
                moveToNextFrame('w');
            }

        }

        ActionListener listener = new AddButtonListener();
        warrior.addActionListener(listener);
    }

    private void createMageButton() {
        mage = new JButton("Select Mage");

        class AddButtonListener implements ActionListener
        {
            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event)
            {
                moveToNextFrame('m');
            }
        }

        ActionListener listener = new AddButtonListener();
        mage.addActionListener(listener);
    }

    public void moveToNextFrame(char c) 
    {
        GameFrame game = new GameFrame(c);
    }

    class ImagePanel extends JPanel 
    {

        private Image img;

        public ImagePanel(Image img) {
            this.img = img;
            Dimension size = new Dimension(img.getWidth(null), img.getHeight(null));
            setPreferredSize(size);
            setMinimumSize(size);
            setMaximumSize(size);
            setSize(size);
            setLayout(null);
        }

        public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
            g.drawImage(img, 0, 0, null);
        }

    }
}

Answer 1

You need to use a LayoutManager .

You should then be able to add your ImagePanel and buttons to the contentPane and have them all layed out and visible.

Try the follwoing:

JFrame frame = new JFrame();
frame.setTitle("Title Screen");
frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);

createMageButton();
createRogueButton();
createWarriorButton();

ImagePanel panel = new ImagePanel(new ImageIcon(".../background.jpg").getImage());
panel.setLayout(new FlowLayout());

panel.add(mage);
panel.add(rogue);
panel.add(warrior);

frame.getContentPane().add(panel);
frame.pack();
frame.setVisible(true);

Answer 2

You set as layout null . That is a special case where absolute positions of the components are accepted. So use `setBounds(x, y, width, height). Better still use a real layout.

Another remark, you can take the image from the class path, say from out of the resulting .jar file):

URL url = getClass().getResource("/background.jpg");
... new ImageIcon(url);