Hi, I'm trying to create a subclass of JButton or AbstractButton that would call specified .actionPerformed as long as the mouse is held down on the button.

So far I was thinking of extending JButton, adding a mouse listener on creation (inside constructor) and calling actionPerformed while the mouse is down. So far i came up with that but I was wondwering if I was on the right track and if so, how to correctly implement the "held down" logic.

package components;

import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.MouseEvent;
import java.awt.event.MouseListener;

import javax.swing.Action;
import javax.swing.Icon;
import javax.swing.JButton;

public class HoldButton extends JButton {

    private class HeldDownMouseListener implements MouseListener {

        private boolean mouseIsHeldDown;

        private HoldButton button;

        private long millis;

        public HeldDownMouseListener(HoldButton button, long millis) {
            this.button = button;
            this.millis = millis;
        }

        @Override
        public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent arg0) { }

        @Override
        public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent arg0) { }

        @Override
        public void mouseExited(MouseEvent arg0) { }

        @Override
        public void mousePressed(MouseEvent arg0) {
            mouseIsHeldDown = true;
//          This should be run in a sub thread?
//          while (mouseIsHeldDown) {
//              button.fireActionPerformed(new ActionEvent(button, ActionEvent.ACTION_PERFORMED, "heldDown"));
//              try {
//                  Thread.sleep(millis);
//              } catch (InterruptedException e) {
//                  e.printStackTrace();
//                  continue;
//              }
//          }
        }

        @Override
        public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent arg0) {
            mouseIsHeldDown = false;
        }

    }

    public HoldButton() {
        addHeldDownMouseListener();
    }

    public HoldButton(Icon icon) {
        super(icon);
        addHeldDownMouseListener();
    }

    public HoldButton(String text) {
        super(text);
        addHeldDownMouseListener();
    }

    public HoldButton(Action a) {
        super(a);
        addHeldDownMouseListener();
    }

    private void addHeldDownMouseListener() {
        addMouseListener(new HeldDownMouseListener(this, 300));
    }

}

Thanks a lot for your time.