The java.awt.datatransfer package provides classes to
support transfer of data to and from the system clipboard. Support
for the clipboard is still in its infancy in Java 1.1. Only string
data is supported, and only cut, copy, and paste. Other data types
and drag and drop will be added in the future.
The java.awt.datatransfer.Transferable interface is
implemented by classes that represent data to be transferred. It
includes methods to determine the possible data flavors of the
object and to retrieve the data itself.
The java.awt.datatransfer.DataFlavor class provides
a MIME type based system for determining the type of data on the
clipboard. For example, flavors include "text/plain;
charset=unicode" and "application/x-java-serialized-object"
A java.awt.datatransfer.UnsupportedFlavorException
is thrown when you ask a Transferable object to return
its contents in an incompatible flavor.
The java.awt.datatransfer.Clipboard class allows
the transfer of data through cut, copy, and paste operations.
Although there's only one system clipboard, your program may create
many different Clipboard objects for internal use.
For synchronization purposes each clipboard must be the
exclusive property of one object. This object must implement the
java.awt.datatransfer.ClipboardOwner interface. This
interface declares a single method, lostOwnership(),
which is which is used to warn an object that it no longer owns the
clipboard.
The java.awt.datatransfer.StringSelection class is
the one concrete implementation of Transferable and
ClipboardOwner included in Java 1.1. It allows you to
transfer plain text to and from the system clipboard.