Setting up a timer involves creating a Timer object, registering one or more action listeners on it, and starting the timer using the start method. For example, the following code creates and starts a timer that fires an action event once per second (as specified by the first argument to the Timer constructor). The second argument to the Timer constructor specifies a listener to receive the timer's action events.

  int delay = 1000; //milliseconds
  ActionListener taskPerformer = new ActionListener() {
      public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
          //...Perform a task...
      }
  };
  new Timer(delay, taskPerformer).start();

Timers are constructed by specifying both a delay parameter and an ActionListener. The delay parameter is used to set both the initial delay and the delay between event firing, in milliseconds. Once the timer has been started, it waits for the initial delay before firing its first ActionEvent to registered listeners. After this first event, it continues to fire events every time the between-event delay has elapsed, until it is stopped.

After construction, the initial delay and the between-event delay can be changed independently, and additional ActionListeners may be added.

If you want the timer to fire only the first time and then stop, invoke setRepeats(false) on the timer.

Although all Timers perform their waiting using a single, shared thread (created by the first Timer object that executes), the action event handlers for Timers execute on another thread -- the event-dispatching thread. This means that the action handlers for Timers can safely perform operations on Swing components. However, it also means that the handlers must execute quickly to keep the GUI responsive.

In v 1.3, another Timer class was added to the Java platform: java.util.Timer. Both it and javax.swing.Timer provide the same basic functionality, but java.util.Timer is more general and has more features. The javax.swing.Timer has two features that can make it a little easier to use with GUIs. First, its event handling metaphor is familiar to GUI programmers and can make dealing with the event-dispatching thread a bit simpler. Second, its automatic thread sharing means that you don't have to take special steps to avoid spawning too many threads. Instead, your timer uses the same thread used to make cursors blink, tool tips appear, and so on.

You can find further documentation and several examples of using timers by visiting How to Use Timers, a section in The Java Tutorial. For more examples and help in choosing between this Timer class and java.util.Timer, see Using Timers in Swing Applications, an article in The Swing Connection.

Warning: Serialized objects of this class will not be compatible with future Swing releases. The current serialization support is appropriate for short term storage or RMI between applications running the same version of Swing. As of 1.4, support for long term storage of all JavaBeans^TM has been added to the java.beans package. Please see XMLEncoder.