The Java runtime is responsible for handling the event queue. In
particular it makes sure that each low-level event is directed to
the proper component. You do not need to worry about
deciding which component the event is meant for. The runtime
handles this for you. In particular the runtime passes the event to
the component's processEvent() method:
protected void processEvent(AWTEvent evt)
The processEvent() method determines the type of
the event and passes it on to one of five other methods in the
java.awt.Component class:
protected void processComponentEvent(ComponentEvent evt)
protected void processFocusEvent(FocusEvent evt)
protected void processKeyEvent(KeyEvent evt)
protected void processMouseEvent(MouseEvent evt)
protected void processMouseMotionEvent(MouseEvent evt)
Each of these methods looks to see if any listener objects of the right type are registered for this component. If so, the event is passed to each of those listener objects in an unpredictable order.
Internally, these methods use a
java.awt.AWTEventMulticaster object to track the
registration of listeners with a component.