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Setting size on JLabel displaces other components in java

I am setting a JLabel for the error messages in my program, so initially the label is empty label.setText(""), but when there is an error it should change to something like label.setText("Error, you have entered invalid data...").
If I use setSize(x,y) on the label, it forces other components to displace when error message takes place. But using setPreferredSize(Dimension(x,y))doesn't impact them.
Q1. Why is that?
Q2. What is the difference between setSize(x,y) and setPreferredSize(Dimension(x,y))
Q3. Does it have to do anything with layout?
Thank you in advance for explanation!
P.S. I am using GridBagLayout for positioning my components on the JPanel.

Don’t use the setSize method.
setSize is called by LayoutManagers, like GridBagLayout, to lay out child components. When you call setSize explicitly, you are fighting with the GridBagLayout. Eventually, GridBagLayout will undo your setSize call, when it calls setSize for its own purposes.
In other words, any call to setSize eventually will be wiped out by the parent layout.
setPreferredSize will not be wiped out. Most LayoutManagers, including GridBagLayout, do their best to respect a component’s preferred size.
However, you should not be calling setPreferredSize. Components already have a preferred size by default, and it is almost certainly better than any numbers you can come up with. For instance, a JLabel’s default preferred size is the size which is just large enough to accommodate its text, icon, and borders.
Computing a preferred size is harder than you might think. How many pixels does text use? How many pixels high is a 12 point font? 12 points is not 12 pixels. 12 points is 12⁄72 inch. How many pixels is that? It depends on the user’s monitor and graphics resolution. All of this is known to the Swing rendering system, and JLabel uses all of that information to determine its default preferred size. You should not try to reinvent all of that work, and you should not try to replace that work with something simpler, as it will be inadequate.
If you just let the JLabel keep its preferred size, GridBagLayout will do its best to accommodate that. If the window itself does not have room to display the JLabel’s new text, you probably should call the window’s pack() method after changing the text.
Update: This appears to be an XY problem—you really want a message that you can show and hide.
You want your layout to be big enough to accommodate your message text as soon as you create it. This is typically done with a CardLayout, which lets you place several components on top of each other, with only one of them visible at any given moment. Since you want to show no text at all, initially, you would add an empty JLabel as the first component in the CardLayout, so it is shown by default:
JLabel label = new JLabel("Error, you have entered invalid data...");
CardLayout messageLayout = new CardLayout();
JPanel messagePane = new JPanel(messageLayout);
messagePane.add(new JLabel(), "blank");
messagePane.add(label, "message");
// Do not add label directly to your user interface.
// Add messagePane instead.
mainWindow.add(messagePane);
// ...
// Show message
messageLayout.show(messagePane, "message");
// ...
// Hide message
messageLayout.show(messagePane, "blank");
"message" and "blank" are never seen by the user. They are just unique identifiers for each component (“card”) in the CardLayout. You can make them anything you want.

The setSize() function sets the size not based on any LayoutManager. Thats why you should always use setPrefferedSize() when working with a LayoutManager. setPrefferedSize() firstly tries to be conform with the LayoutManagers dimensions if then possible Java tries to set the size of the Label according to your setPrefferedSize() input.
So yes, it does have anything to do with layout. If possible, you should only use setPrefferedSize() as you are working with layout managers.

Resizing only one part of the Java Swing components

On my Java Swing application I have two components. On the left side is a navigation (JList) and on the right side is a JTable. I would like to leave the possibility to increase the size of the window, without increasing the size of both components.
The proportion of 50/50 is kept, through ought the whole sizing. I use GridLayout. Is this behavior rooted into the LayoutManager or is a property which has to be set?

GridbagLayout will allow you to achieve this. However, have you also considered using a JSplitPane where the left-hand side contains your navigation panel and the right hand side contains the table? You could configure it so that all additional space is allocated to the right hand side by calling setResizeWeight(0.0). However, you still retain the flexibility of allowing the user to manually resize the navigation area if required. You also have the option to hide your navigation panel completely by calling setOneTouchExpandable(true) on the split pane.

From what I know the GridLayout manager resizes all cells to the same size. Knowing this you might use it anyway just add the component you want to stay unchanged to a panel and then add this panel to a cell instead.
Or use a different layout manager mine favourite is TableLayout, where you can set which columns/rows should fill the empty space where the rest will stay in their preferred size.
Good luck, Boro

Suggestion: Don't us GridLayout. Instead use other layouts such Borderlayout or GridBagLayout or a combination of layouts. For instance if you used BorderLayout, you could but the JTable BorderLayout.CENTER and the JList in one of the other positions. Or if you use GridBagLayout, then by setting your GridBagConstraint weightx and weighty values correctly and the fill values (only you know what you currently desire), would allow selective enlargement of the components added to the container.

Question to pack() method

I'm building a GUI application, and within a JFrame i have 2 jcombobox's and a JPanel to view certain data. Now when i call the pack() methode in the main class it puts the two jcombobox'es next to my JPanel, which i dont want, because I want them North. Ofcourse I've tried to hard-code it in my code, but it doesn't work after I've called the pack() method.
Are there any alternatives to this method?

Only one component can be NORTH, so if you want both ComboBoxes to be NORTH you have to add them into a separate container. This separate container can then be put NORTH.
(Post the source for more exact help.)

All pack does is resize the Window (in this case JFrame) to its preferred size and the preferred sizes of its sub-components. To control the actual location of the sub-components relative to one another you need to use an appropriate LayoutManager.
You might want to check out the Using Layout Managers tutorial.

The pack() method just causes the layouting to happen, it has abolutely nothing to do with what is put where.
Most likely you're not using layout managers correctly. Show us your code and we can tell you waht exactly you're doing wrong.

You can avoid using pack by explicitly setting the frame size with setSize and setBounds. However, using pack is usually the preferred way as it leaves the frame layout manager in charge of the frame size.
That being said, the problem you are describing appears to be related to the correct use of a layout manager rather than the sizing of the frame. Have a look at the various layout managers for Swing and how to use them: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17409_01/javase/tutorial/uiswing/layout/using.html.

How to find out the preferred size of a JPanel which is not displayed, according to its content?

I am using a JPanel (with several labels inside) to add a dynamic information on a graph. This panel is dynamically created, it is not visible before I use it to draw.
For this, I am using a BufferedImage, and I follow approximately the same steps as described on this other question. It works good, as long as I specify all sizes (the panel, and its components).
Like asked as well in comments of the referred question, how can I determine the optimal size of this panel? The same operation would be done if this panel was displayed in a regular frame/layout setting.
In my case, how can I "pack", in a way, this panel, so that its size, and size of its content are set to the optimal (determined by the size of labels, then)?

Suraj and willcodejavaforfood put me on the good track.
Checking what is actually done in a pack() method, I see that this is mostly setting the current size to the one returned by getPreferredSize().
From this, I managed to make such solution:
// Creating the panel
JPanel lPanel = new JPanel();
//lPanel.setSize(1000, 1000); //default size, not needed anymore
lPanel.setLayout(new BoxLayout(lPanel, BoxLayout.PAGE_AXIS));
//Adding the content
lPanel.add(new JLabel("Blah"));
// etc...
//Adjust the panel to its preferred size
lPanel.setSize(lPanel.getPreferredSize());
//Call the layout method
//(this will adjust the content components to their correct size and position)
lPanel.doLayout();
This method works correctly, and adjusts the panel and its content to the correct size (and answers my question in a simplistic way: "how to find the preferred size? getPreferredSize()").
However, it requires to set the initial size to a large enough size, so that the content fits in, or they won't be put on the layout. This is a bit pity, and not really "clean", but I can't find a way to avoid that, for now.
Edit: Actually, the default size was not necessary, because getPreferredSize() returns the correct value, even before calling doLayout(). As such, the panel can be set to its proper size before calling the layout method.

The direct answer is to call Window#pack(). This method will automatically set the size of all underlying children to thier preferred sizes(ofcourse this depends on layouts of child containers, for e.g. BorderLayout doesent give a damn about preffered sizes).
So as long as you have set preferred sizes(or min/max sizes in case layouts are like BorderLayout) of your child components, pack() method will be all you need.
[UPDATE]One way is to do is add a HierarchyListener to your jpanel and check for HierarchyEvent#DISPLAYABILITY_CHANGED events. This event is called when your panel is realized that is ready to be shown(and a parent is available), at this moment you can do:
SwingUtilities#getWindowAncestor(myPanel).pack();

Can a layout manager spawn several JPanels?

I have to build a rather large form with many controls. The controls are divided in basic controls/settings and extended controls/settings. The user can decide if he wants to see only the basic or both basic and extended controls.
I've dropped all extended controls onto their own JPanel so that I can easily switch between the two views by showing or hiding this panel.
Currently I'm using GroupLayout and what happens is that the controls on different panels are not aligned:
Label aaa: Text field
Label a: Text field
Label aaaaaa: Text field
----------------------------
Label b: Text field
Label bbb: Text field
Label bb: Text field
Unfortunatly I found now way to "synchronize" the layouts of the two panels (except using AbsoluteLayout and fixed control coordinates)
Is there any way to achive this?
Is my whole design flawed?
EDIT: If it is possible I would like to keep the GroupLayout manager.

As far as I know, no Swing LayoutManager (from JRE or open source) can span several panels.
I am currently working on such a feature (which I called "layouts synchronization") for my DesignGridLayout project, but it is not something easy to implements (I have started about 2 weeks ago and I still don't see exactly if and when I will get to something interesting, but I still have high hope for it;-))
One option you could check would be to add all components to the same panel (with just one GroupLayout then) and hide/show them based on user's selection. Hopefully, GroupLayout will adapt the size to the situation (after calling pack()).
If GroupLayout behaves well, then it would just be a matter of calling pack() each time after user changes his selection to show/hide extended fields.
Else you would have to manually set the size of your panel every time the user changes his selection.

Probably the easiest (good) way to do it is to add all the components to the main panel. Set the subpanels to non-opaque, and add the also to the main panel. The main panel the needs optimised drawing to be switched off.
Another technique is to add a spacer component. To the bottom panel add a component in the same column as the labels which dynamically takes the width component of its various size methods from the top labels. Do the same in reverse to the top panel.

I think there is no way to do it with the standard layout managers. You'll probably have to write your own layout manager, but it shouldn't be too hard if you subclass GroupLayout.

You could use GridLayout instead of GroupLayout which will give you uniform spacing between the columns

If you want to keep them in separate panels with separate layouts:
Iterate over all of the labels that you add, and find the maximum preferred width of each.
Iterate a second time, and set the preferred size to that each label's preferred height, but the maximum width.

This is the explanation of th GridLayout. This will set every component to the size, you expect it. With the GridData object you can specify how the components are ordere.
Examples
(source: sun.com)