A TextField object is a text component that allows for the editing of a single line of text.

For example, the following image depicts a frame with four text fields of varying widths. Two of these text fields display the predefined text "Hello".

The preceding text describes this image.

Here is the code that produces these four text fields:

 TextField tf1, tf2, tf3, tf4;
 // a blank text field
 tf1 = new TextField();
 // blank field of 20 columns
 tf2 = new TextField("", 20);
 // predefined text displayed
 tf3 = new TextField("Hello!");
 // predefined text in 30 columns
 tf4 = new TextField("Hello", 30);

Every time the user types a key in the text field, one or more key events are sent to the text field. A KeyEvent may be one of three types: keyPressed, keyReleased, or keyTyped. The properties of a key event indicate which of these types it is, as well as additional information about the event, such as what modifiers are applied to the key event and the time at which the event occurred.

The key event is passed to every KeyListener or KeyAdapter object which registered to receive such events using the component's addKeyListener method. ( KeyAdapter objects implement the KeyListener interface.)

It is also possible to fire an ActionEvent. If action events are enabled for the text field, they may be fired by pressing the Return key.

The TextField class's processEvent method examines the action event and passes it along to processActionEvent. The latter method redirects the event to any ActionListener objects that have registered to receive action events generated by this text field.

extends TextComponent

Since: 1.0