Swing JDialog/JTextPane and HTML links

Question

I am using an html page inside a swing JTextPane in a JDialog.
In the html I have a <a href="mailto:email@adress.com">John</a>
When I view the web page via an explorer when the mouse goes to the link I can see the mailto.
When I press the link I get the error "no default mail client installed", but I guess this is due to in my PC I have not configured Outlook or some other program.
When I open the JDialog from my Swing application, I see John highlighted as a link, but when I press the link nothing happens.
I was expecting to get the same error message as the browser.
So my question is can the link be opened via a Swing application or not?

Thanks

Answer 1

Neither the tooltip (showing the target hyperlink address) nor the action on press happens automatically, you have to code it: for the first, register the pane with the ToolTipManager, for the latter, register a HyperlinkListener, something like:

    final JEditorPane pane = new JEditorPane("http://swingx.java.net");
    pane.setEditable(false);
    ToolTipManager.sharedInstance().registerComponent(pane);

    HyperlinkListener l = new HyperlinkListener() {
        @Override
        public void hyperlinkUpdate(HyperlinkEvent e) {
            if (HyperlinkEvent.EventType.ACTIVATED == e.getEventType()) {
                try {
                    pane.setPage(e.getURL());
                } catch (IOException e1) {
                    e1.printStackTrace();
                }
            }

        }

    };
    pane.addHyperlinkListener(l);

The example is about opening the page in the same pane. If you want to activate the default browser/mail-client, ask the Desktop (new to jdk1.6) to do it for you

Answer 2

final JEditorPane jep = new JEditorPane("text/html",
    "The rain in <a href='http://foo.com/'>Spain</a> falls mainly on the <a href='http://bar.com/'>plain</a>.");

jep.setEditable(false);
jep.setOpaque(false);
final Desktop desktop = Desktop.getDesktop(); 

jep.addHyperlinkListener(new HyperlinkListener() {

    public void hyperlinkUpdate(HyperlinkEvent hle) {
        if (HyperlinkEvent.EventType.ACTIVATED.equals(hle.getEventType())) {
            try {
                System.out.println(hle.getURL());
                jep.setPage(hle.getURL());
                try {
                    desktop.browse(new URI(hle.getURL().toString()));
                } catch (URISyntaxException ex) {
                    Logger.getLogger(App.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
                }
            } catch (IOException ex) {
                Logger.getLogger(App.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
            }

        }
    }
});

JPanel p = new JPanel();
p.add(new JLabel("Foo."));
p.add(jep);
p.add(new JLabel("Bar."));

JFrame f = new JFrame("HyperlinkListener");
f.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
f.getContentPane().add(p, BorderLayout.CENTER);
f.setSize(400, 150);
f.setVisible(true);