The ActionManager manages sets of javax.swing.Actions for an application. There are convenience methods for getting and setting the state of the action. All of these elements have a unique id tag which is used by the ActionManager to reference the action. This id maps to the Action.ACTION_COMMAND_KEY on the Action.

The ActionManager may be used to conveniently register callback methods on BoundActions.

A typical use case of the ActionManager is:

   ActionManager manager = ActionManager.getInstance();

   // load Actions
   manager.addAction(action);

   // Change the state of the action:
   manager.setEnabled("new-action", newState);
 

The ActionManager also supports Actions that can have a selected state associated with them. These Actions are typically represented by a JCheckBox or similar widget. For such actions the registered method is invoked with an additional parameter indicating the selected state of the widget. For example, for the callback handler:

  public class Handler {
      public void stateChanged(boolean newState);
   }
 

The registration method would look similar:

  manager.registerCallback("select-action", new Handler(), "stateChanged");
 

The stateChanged method would be invoked as the selected state of the widget changed. Additionally if you need to change the selected state of the Action use the ActionManager method setSelected.

The ActionContainerFactory uses the managed Actions in a ActionManager to create user interface components. It uses the shared instance of ActionManager by default. For example, to create a JMenu based on an action-list id:

 ActionContainerFactory factory = new ActionContainerFactory();
 JMenu file = factory.createMenu(list);