Toggling JButton setEnabled property

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Java

Hi, I have a c++ console application and I am trying to create a GUI for it, but I am lost in all the APIs, so I decided do create instead a Java GUI and send control messages back and forth using TCP. So far it works like a charm, but there is one thing I can't get to work. I need to enable/disable some buttons depending on the state of the c++ app, so my idea is to have a loop which checks for incoming messages, and then updates an integer variable. There would then be ideally two ways to update the buttons:

1 - to have a loop check the int variable and update the button state
2 - to have the variable change trigger an event, and use a listener to
update the button

The GUI was created using Netbeans gui builder, so the jButtons are private and write protected.

Is there a way to implement this?

Here's the code

public class Telis extends javax.swing.JFrame{

    static Socket echoSocket = null;
    static PrintWriter out = null;
    static BufferedReader in = null;
    static String userInput;
    static Integer input;

    /** Creates new form */
    public Telis() {

                /**
                 initialze socket here
                **/

        initComponents();//I removed the implementation of init components, to reduce message length, basically it sets up the view
    }


    private void jButton1ActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) {
        out.println("#EFC0");
    }

    private void jButton2ActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) {
        out.println("#EFC1");
    }

    private void jButton3ActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) {
        out.println("#EFC2");
    }

    private void jButton4ActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) {
        out.println("#EFC3");
    }

    private void jButton5ActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) {
        out.println("#EFC4");
    }

    private void jButton1PropertyChange(java.beans.PropertyChangeEvent evt) {

    }

    public static void main(String args[]) {

        try {
            out.close();
            in.close();
            echoSocket.close();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            System.err.println("Exception: " + e.getMessage());
        }

        java.awt.EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable() {

            public void run() {
                new Telis().setVisible(true);
            }
        });
        while(true){
                   try{
                       userInput = in.readLine();
                       input = userInput.charAt(0) - 48;
                   }catch (Exception e) {
            System.err.println("Exception: " + e.getMessage());
        }
        }
    }


    // Variables declaration - do not modify
    private javax.swing.JButton jButton1;
    private javax.swing.JButton jButton2;
    private javax.swing.JButton jButton3;
    private javax.swing.JButton jButton4;
    private javax.swing.JButton jButton5;
    private javax.swing.JLabel jLabel1;
    private javax.swing.JLabel jLabel2;
    private javax.swing.JPanel jPanel1;
    private javax.swing.JPanel jPanel2;
    private javax.swing.JPanel jPanel3;
    private javax.swing.JPanel jPanel4;
    private javax.swing.JPanel jPanel5;
    private javax.swing.JScrollPane jScrollPane1;
    private javax.swing.JScrollPane jScrollPane2;
    private org.jdesktop.beansbinding.BindingGroup bindingGroup;
    // End of variables declaration
}