Chapter 14. Data Transfer
Data transfer is the generic term for GUI mechanisms that allow an end user to transfer text or other data within an application or between applications. The two common data transfer metaphors are cut-and-paste and drag-and-drop. Java’s support for data transfer has evolved over several releases:
In Java 1.1, the
java.awt.datatransfer
package provided a data transfer infrastructure and support for the cut-and-paste metaphor.Java 1.2 extended the data transfer infrastructure with the
java.awt.dnd
package, and added support for drag-and-drop.In Java 1.4, the
javax.swing
package introduces theTransferHandler
class, which simplifies the data transfer infrastructure of previous releases and makes it easier to provide simple drag-and-drop capabilities in a Swing application.
This chapter demonstrates how you can add support for
cut-and-paste and drag-and-drop to your AWT and Swing applications. It shows how to use the Swing
TransferHandler
class for simple
cases, and how to use the underlying DataFlavor
class and the Transferable
interface to permit the transfer
of custom data types between applications.
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