location and size of jtextarea in jscrollpane is not set

Question

I am working on the editor. I am using Java swing for it. I have embedded a JTextArea with JScrollPane. i want to position the jtextarea of particular size at the middle of JScrollPane. To do this I used setLocation function. But this is not working?

public class ScrollPaneTest extends JFrame {
private Container myCP;
private JTextArea resultsTA;
private JScrollPane scrollPane;
private  JPanel jpanel;

public ScrollPaneTest() {
resultsTA = new JTextArea(50,50);
resultsTA.setLocation(100,100);
jpanel=new JPanel(new BorderLayout());
jpanel.add(resultsTA,BorderLayout.CENTER);

scrollPane = new JScrollPane(jpanel,JScrollPane.VERTICAL_SCROLLBAR_ALWAYS,JScrollPane.HORIZONTAL_SCROLLBAR_ALWAYS);
scrollPane.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(800, 800));
scrollPane.setBounds(0, 0, 800, 800);

setSize(800, 800);
setLocation(0, 0);
myCP = this.getContentPane();
myCP.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
myCP.add(scrollPane);
setVisible(true);
addWindowListener(new WindowAdapter() {
    public void windowClosing(WindowEvent e) {
        System.exit(0);
    }
 });
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
     new ScrollPaneTest();
     }
}

Answer 1

You simply have to add the JTextArea to the JScrollPane, and add it to the CENTER of the JPanel having BorderLayout.

Don't use AbsolutePositioning. Add a proper LayoutManager, and let LayoutManager do the rest for positioning and sizing your components on the screen.

In order to use the setBounds(...) method you have to use a null Layout for your component, which is not worth using, provided the perspective, as mentioned in the first paragraph of the AbsolutePositioning. Though in the code example provided by you, you are doing both the thingies together i.e. using Layout and using AbsolutePositioning, which is wrong in every way. My advice STOP DOING IT :-)

In the example provided the ROWS and COLUMNS provided by you are sufficient to size the JTextArea by the Layout concern.

Code Example :

import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;

public class Example
{
    private JTextArea tarea;

    private void displayGUI()
    {
        JFrame frame = new JFrame("JScrollPane Example");
        frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.DISPOSE_ON_CLOSE);

        JPanel contentPane = new JPanel();
        contentPane.setLayout(new BorderLayout(5, 5));

        JScrollPane textScroller = new JScrollPane();
        tarea = new JTextArea(30, 30);
        textScroller.setViewportView(tarea);

        contentPane.add(textScroller);
        frame.setContentPane(contentPane);
        frame.pack();
        frame.setLocationByPlatform(true);
        frame.setVisible(true);
    }

    public static void main(String... args)
    {
        EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable()
        {
            @Override
            public void run()
            {
                new Example().displayGUI();
            }
        });
    }
}