When writing Swing GUI code (in particular) we often have many repetitive calls to the same object. When using Swing from Scala, it would be nice to remove that duplication:

SwingBuilder.scala

import javax.swing.JCheckBox

object SwingBuilder {

  // Instead of this:
  val checkbox = new JCheckBox()
  checkbox.setText("Hello")
  checkbox.setAlignmentX(0.0f)
  checkbox.setLocation(0, 100)

  // Use this:
  def setup[T](t: T)(fs: T => Any*): T = { fs.foreach(_(t)) ; t }
  
  // So we can set up widgets like this:
  val checkbox2 = setup(new JCheckBox)(_.setText("Hello"), _.setAlignmentX(0.0f), _.setLocation(0, 100))
  
  // It feels like there should be an easier built-in way to apply multiple methods 
  // like this, but I haven't found it yet...
  
  // ... Update: here's one from http://stackoverflow.com/q/2705018/699224
  // One can just create an anonymous subclass:
  
  val checkbox3 = new JCheckBox() {
    setText("Hello")
    setAlignmentX(0.0f)
    setLocation(0, 100)
  }
  
  // or use this variant so the object is fully constructed first
  // (though the added awkwardness possibly outweighs the advantage)
  
  val checkbox4 = new JCheckBox();  // NB newline or semicolon required
  
  {
    import checkbox4._
    setText("Hello")
    setAlignmentX(0.0f)
    setLocation(0, 100)
  }
  
  // The nearest equivalent in Java is an instance initializer {{}}
  
  //		JButton button = new JButton()
  //    {
	//		    {
  //			      setText("Hello");
	//		        setAlignmentX(0.0f);
	//		        setLocation(0, 100);
	//		    }
	//  	};
}