In this tutorial, we will learn how to create a Java swing application and connect to a MySQL database using the JDBC API.

Recommended Java Swing tutorials:

Video Tutorial

Tools and Technologies used

JDK 1.8
MySQL Connector Java - 8.0.13
JDBC - 4.2
Eclipse IDE

What we'll build?

In this tutorial, we build a simple Login Application using Swing and we authenticate the application user credentials (username and password) with database username and password.

Here is the screenshot shows the output of this application:

Database Setup

Make sure that you have installed the MySQL server on your machine.

Let's first create a database with the following SQL statement:

create database swing_demo;

Now, let's create a student table in the above-created database with the following SQL statement:

CREATE TABLE student
( id int NOT NULL,
  name varchar(250) NOT NULL,
  password varchar(250)
);

Insert a single record in the above table with the following SQL statement:

INSERT INTO student (id, name, password)
VALUES (1, 'Ramesh', 'Ramesh@123');

Create a Simple Java Project

Let's create a simple Java project in Eclipse IDE, name this project as "swing-registration-from-example".

You can use this tutorial to create a simple Java project in Eclipse IDE.

Connecting With Database

In order to connect our Java program with the MySQL database, we need to include MySQL JDBC driver which is a JAR file, namely mysql-connector-java-8.0.13-bin.jar.

Let's download this jar file and add it to your project classpath.

Develop User Login Form

Let's write a code to develop user login form using Java Swing APIs.

package com.javaguides.javaswing.login;

import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.EventQueue;
import java.awt.Font;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import java.sql.Connection;
import java.sql.DriverManager;
import java.sql.PreparedStatement;
import java.sql.ResultSet;
import java.sql.SQLException;

import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JLabel;
import javax.swing.JOptionPane;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.JPasswordField;
import javax.swing.JTextField;
import javax.swing.border.EmptyBorder;

public class UserLogin extends JFrame {

    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
    private JTextField textField;
    private JPasswordField passwordField;
    private JButton btnNewButton;
    private JLabel label;
    private JPanel contentPane;

    /**
     * Launch the application.
     */
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
            public void run() {
                try {
                    UserLogin frame = new UserLogin();
                    frame.setVisible(true);
                } catch (Exception e) {
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }
            }
        });
    }

    /**
     * Create the frame.
     */
    public UserLogin() {
        setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        setBounds(450, 190, 1014, 597);
        setResizable(false);
        contentPane = new JPanel();
        contentPane.setBorder(new EmptyBorder(5, 5, 5, 5));
        setContentPane(contentPane);
        contentPane.setLayout(null);

        JLabel lblNewLabel = new JLabel("Login");
        lblNewLabel.setForeground(Color.BLACK);
        lblNewLabel.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 46));
        lblNewLabel.setBounds(423, 13, 273, 93);
        contentPane.add(lblNewLabel);

        textField = new JTextField();
        textField.setFont(new Font("Tahoma", Font.PLAIN, 32));
        textField.setBounds(481, 170, 281, 68);
        contentPane.add(textField);
        textField.setColumns(10);

        passwordField = new JPasswordField();
        passwordField.setFont(new Font("Tahoma", Font.PLAIN, 32));
        passwordField.setBounds(481, 286, 281, 68);
        contentPane.add(passwordField);

        JLabel lblUsername = new JLabel("Username");
        lblUsername.setBackground(Color.BLACK);
        lblUsername.setForeground(Color.BLACK);
        lblUsername.setFont(new Font("Tahoma", Font.PLAIN, 31));
        lblUsername.setBounds(250, 166, 193, 52);
        contentPane.add(lblUsername);

        JLabel lblPassword = new JLabel("Password");
        lblPassword.setForeground(Color.BLACK);
        lblPassword.setBackground(Color.CYAN);
        lblPassword.setFont(new Font("Tahoma", Font.PLAIN, 31));
        lblPassword.setBounds(250, 286, 193, 52);
        contentPane.add(lblPassword);

        btnNewButton = new JButton("Login");
        btnNewButton.setFont(new Font("Tahoma", Font.PLAIN, 26));
        btnNewButton.setBounds(545, 392, 162, 73);
        btnNewButton.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {

            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
                String userName = textField.getText();
                String password = passwordField.getText();
                try {
                    Connection connection = (Connection) DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/swing_demo",
                        "root", "root");

                    PreparedStatement st = (PreparedStatement) connection
                        .prepareStatement("Select name, password from student where name=? and password=?");

                    st.setString(1, userName);
                    st.setString(2, password);
                    ResultSet rs = st.executeQuery();
                    if (rs.next()) {
                        dispose();
                        UserHome ah = new UserHome(userName);
                        ah.setTitle("Welcome");
                        ah.setVisible(true);
                        JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(btnNewButton, "You have successfully logged in");
                    } else {
                        JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(btnNewButton, "Wrong Username & Password");
                    }
                } catch (SQLException sqlException) {
                    sqlException.printStackTrace();
                }
            }
        });

        contentPane.add(btnNewButton);

        label = new JLabel("");
        label.setBounds(0, 0, 1008, 562);
        contentPane.add(label);
    }
}

Let's understand the above program.

In this above example, we no need to register a JDBC driver because since Java 1.6 and JDBC 4.0 API, it provides a new feature to discover java.sql.Driver automatically, it means the Class.forName is no longer required. Just put any JDBC 4.x driver in the project classpath, and Java is able to detect it.

private void databaseOperation(String userName, String password) {
 try {
     Connection connection = (Connection) DriverManager
        .getConnection("jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/swing_demo", "root", "root");

     PreparedStatement st = connection
       .prepareStatement("Select name, password from student where name=? and password=?");

     st.setString(1, userName);
     st.setString(2, password);
     ResultSet rs = st.executeQuery();
     if (rs.next()) {
         JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(btnNewButton, "You have successfully logged in");
     } else {
         JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(btnNewButton, "Wrong Username & Password");
     }
     } catch (SQLException sqlException) {
         sqlException.printStackTrace();
 }
}

Create a Login label using the following code snippet:

JLabel lblNewLabel = new JLabel("Login");
lblNewLabel.setForeground(Color.BLACK);
lblNewLabel.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 46));
lblNewLabel.setBounds(423, 13, 273, 93);
contentPane.add(lblNewLabel);

Created username and password labels:

JLabel lblUsername = new JLabel("Username");
lblUsername.setBackground(Color.BLACK);
lblUsername.setForeground(Color.BLACK);
lblUsername.setFont(new Font("Tahoma", Font.PLAIN, 31));
lblUsername.setBounds(250, 166, 193, 52);
contentPane.add(lblUsername);

JLabel lblPassword = new JLabel("Password");
lblPassword.setForeground(Color.BLACK);
lblPassword.setBackground(Color.CYAN);
lblPassword.setFont(new Font("Tahoma", Font.PLAIN, 31));
lblPassword.setBounds(250, 286, 193, 52);
contentPane.add(lblPassword);

Created username and password text fields:

textField = new JTextField();
textField.setFont(new Font("Tahoma", Font.PLAIN, 32));
textField.setBounds(481, 170, 281, 68);
contentPane.add(textField);
textField.setColumns(10);

passwordField = new JPasswordField();
passwordField.setFont(new Font("Tahoma", Font.PLAIN, 32));
passwordField.setBounds(481, 286,