Question:
I know how to detect a mouse click with a MouseListener, but how do
I obtain the coordinates associated with the click?
Answer:
If you already know how to detect a mouse click, you're just one step
away from being able to retrieve the coordinates associated with the
click. To detect a mouse click in a component, you register a
MouseListener with the addMouseListener() method defined in
java.awt.Component. This allows you to detect when the mouse is
pressed, released, or clicked in a component. It also allows you to
detect when the mouse enters or leaves the component. Each time one
of these events occurs, the appropriate MouseListener method is
invoked with a MouseEvent as an argument.
For all of these events, the MouseEvent will contain the coordinates of the mouse at the time of the event. You can get the coordinates together as a Point object
with getPoint(), or separately with getX() and getY(). The
coordinates will be returned relative to the component reporting the
event. You can use translatePoint(int x, int y) to convert the
coordinates to be relative to the entire screen or some other
component.