Arrange Boxes vertically

Question

I wanted to put panels in specific positions, so I tried to combine some layout managers, but I still didn’t get the result I need.

I tried to use the gridLayout, so the components wouldn’t be stretched, but I’m not sure I’m making a wrong use of it.

I tried to do that:

where the black boards are components, in that case labels.

And the result I got was:

Can anyone show me or indicate a way to do that?

Follow an example of the code:

import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.GridLayout;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JLabel;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.SwingUtilities;
import static javax.swing.WindowConstants.DISPOSE_ON_CLOSE;

public class PainelPosicao {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(() -> new PainelPosicao());
    }

    public PainelPosicao() {
        JFrame jFrame = new JFrame();
        jFrame.setUndecorated(true);
        jFrame.setContentPane(new Pane());
        jFrame.setSize(500, 300);
        jFrame.setVisible(true);
        jFrame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
        jFrame.setDefaultCloseOperation(DISPOSE_ON_CLOSE);
    }

    class Pane extends JPanel {

        public Pane() {
            setLayout(new GridLayout(2, 1));
            JPanel gridPainel = new JPanel();
            gridPainel.setLayout(new GridLayout(2, 1));
            gridPainel.setBackground(Color.GREEN);

            JPanel painel = new JPanel();
            painel.add(new JLabel("Label 01"));

            JPanel painelProgress = new JPanel();
            painelProgress.setLayout(new GridLayout(2, 1));
            painelProgress.add(new JLabel("Label 01"));
            painelProgress.add(new JLabel(".......Label 02 ......"));

            gridPainel.add(painel);
            gridPainel.add(painelProgress);
            add(gridPainel);
            setBackground(Color.BLACK);
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

If the goal is to align the center and bottom position of the two bottom planes, I was able to do so:

import static javax.swing.WindowConstants.DISPOSE_ON_CLOSE;

import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.Component;
import java.awt.Dimension;

import javax.swing.BoxLayout;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JLabel;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.SwingUtilities;

public class PainelPosicao {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(() -> new PainelPosicao());
    }

    public PainelPosicao() {
        JFrame jFrame = new JFrame();
        jFrame.setUndecorated(true);
        jFrame.setContentPane(new Pane());
        jFrame.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(500, 300));
        jFrame.pack();
        jFrame.setVisible(true);
        jFrame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
        jFrame.setDefaultCloseOperation(DISPOSE_ON_CLOSE);
    }



    class Pane extends JPanel {

        public Pane() {

            setLayout(new BorderLayout());

            JPanel painel = new JPanel();
            painel.add(new JLabel("Label 01"));

            JPanel painelProgress = new JPanel();
            painelProgress.setLayout(new BoxLayout(painelProgress, BoxLayout.PAGE_AXIS));

            JLabel label1 = new JLabel("Label 01");
            label1.setAlignmentX(Component.CENTER_ALIGNMENT);
            painelProgress.add(label1);

            JLabel label2 = new JLabel(".......Label 02 ......");
            label2.setAlignmentX(Component.CENTER_ALIGNMENT);
            painelProgress.add(label2);

            add(painel, BorderLayout.NORTH);
            add(painelProgress, BorderLayout.SOUTH);
        }
    }
}

Upshot:

To organize the panel where you add the two Labels, I used the layout manager BoxLayout, which allows me to add components in vertical orientation. Then I used the method setAlignmentX() to guide the BoxLayout align the component horizontally in the center.

---

There’s this other more simplistic approach, without using that much of panels:

class Pane2 extends JPanel {

    public Pane2() {

        setLayout(new BoxLayout(this, BoxLayout.PAGE_AXIS));

        JLabel label1 = new JLabel("Label 01");  
        label1.setAlignmentX(Component.CENTER_ALIGNMENT);
        add(label1);

        add(Box.createVerticalGlue());

        JLabel label2 = new JLabel("Label 02");
        label2.setAlignmentX(Component.CENTER_ALIGNMENT);
        add(label2);

        JLabel label3 = new JLabel(".......Label 03 ......");
        label3.setAlignmentX(Component.CENTER_ALIGNMENT);
        add(label3);

    }
}

Still using the flexibility of use of BoxLayout, in this approach I organize the 3 Abels in it JPanel, and use a fill feature, through the method createVerticalGlue(), that fills the space from the top label, pushing the two low Labels up to the bottom edge of the screen.