User talk:Mehra.jaya

http://www.cafeaulait.org/course/week5/18.html

Passing Parameters to Applets

Parameters are passed to applets in NAME=VALUE pairs in  tags between the opening and closing APPLET tags. Inside the applet, you read the values passed through the PARAM tags with the getParameter method of the java.applet.Applet class.

The program below demonstrates this with a generic string drawing applet. The applet parameter "Message" is the string to be drawn.

import java.applet.*; import java.awt.*; public class DrawStringApplet extends Applet {

private String defaultMessage = "Hello!"; public void paint(Graphics g) { String inputFromPage = this.getParameter("Message"); if (inputFromPage == null) inputFromPage = defaultMessage; g.drawString(inputFromPage, 50, 25); } }

You also need an HTML file that references your applet. The following simple HTML file will do:

   Draw String  

 This is the applet:   This page will be very boring if your browser doesn't understand Java.   

Of course you are free to change "Howdy, there!" to a "message" of your choice. You only need to change the HTML, not the Java source code. PARAMs let you customize applets without changing or recompiling the code.

Parameterizable applet

This applet is very similar to the HelloWorldApplet. However rather than hardcoding the message to be printed it's read into the variable inputFromPage from a PARAM element in the HTML.

You pass getParameter a string that names the parameter you want. This string should match the name of a PARAM element in the HTML page. getParameter returns the value of the parameter. All values are passed as strings. If you want to get another type like an integer, then you'll need to pass it as a string and convert it to the type you really want.

The PARAM element is also straightforward. It occurs between  and . It has two attributes of its own, NAME and VALUE. NAME identifies which PARAM this is. VALUE is the string value of the PARAM. Both should be enclosed in double quote marks if they contain white space.

An applet is not limited to one PARAM. You can pass as many named PARAMs to an applet as you like. An applet does not necessarily need to use all the PARAMs that are in the HTML. Additional PARAMs can be safely ignored.