Making card game, need to add JLabels to JPanel at runtime based on how many cards in player's hand

Question

In my game, the player's hand will typically be around 5 cards (and a separate ArrayList), but can get massive quickly with a lot of "draw cards" options in the game. Everywhere else that cards are displayed, I have them in a JLabel which updates to show the image and when clicked, the image moves to the player discard pile and the card is added to the discard ArrayList, like this:

private void mainDeckMouseClicked(java.awt.event.MouseEvent evt) {                                      
        ImageIcon mainDeckEmpty = new ImageIcon("C:\\DC Card Game\\src\\DCCardGame\\resources\\Other Cards\\Empty Main Deck.png");

        if (DrawCards.cards.isEmpty())
            mainDeck.setIcon(mainDeckEmpty);

        if (slot1Card == noCard)
        {
            if (!DrawCards.cards.isEmpty())
            {
                slot1Card = DrawCards.drawFromMainDeck();
                lineupSlot1.setIcon(new ImageIcon(slot1Card.getImage()));
                lineupSlot1.setToolTipText(slot1Card.getCardText());
                if (DrawCards.cards.isEmpty())
                mainDeck.setIcon(mainDeckEmpty);
            }
        }
}

This is a snippet of code from when the main deck is clicked and it adds cards to the lineup. This works beautifully.

The problem I'm running into is that for the playerHand ArrayList, I can't figure out how to add a JLabel on the fly (when necessary), assign an image to it based on the card drawn, and then assign the actual card object to a variable that can be manipulated. In the example above, I'm assigning it to a predefined variable slot1Card so how would I be able to assign a card to a variable when I can't define it at run time OR is there a way to assign all the values shown above (discard image, player hand image, tooltip text, card object, etc) without using a variable? Also, I'm displaying player hand cards in a panel using GridLayout, inside a JScrollPane.

Thanks in advance!

Edit: More SSCCE - this is the code I just quickly wrote so that on mouseclick it adds cards from the deck to the player hand. This would need to be what is modified to add labels to the jpanel, I believe.

private void playerDeckMouseClicked(java.awt.event.MouseEvent evt) {                                        
    ImageIcon playerDeckEmpty = new ImageIcon("C:\\DC Card       Game\\src\\DCCardGame\\resources\\Other Cards\\Empty Player Deck.png");

    if (DrawCards.player_1_deck.isEmpty())
        playerDeck.setIcon(playerDeckEmpty);

    if (!DrawCards.cards.isEmpty())
        {
            playerHandSlot1Card = DrawCards.drawFromPlayerDeck();
            playerHandSlot1.setIcon(new ImageIcon(playerHandSlot1Card.getImage()));
            playerHandSlot1.setToolTipText(playerHandSlot1Card.getCardText());

            playerHandSlot2Card = DrawCards.drawFromPlayerDeck();
            playerHandSlot2.setIcon(new ImageIcon(playerHandSlot2Card.getImage()));
            playerHandSlot2.setToolTipText(playerHandSlot2Card.getCardText());

            playerHandSlot3Card = DrawCards.drawFromPlayerDeck();
            playerHandSlot3.setIcon(new ImageIcon(playerHandSlot3Card.getImage()));
            playerHandSlot3.setToolTipText(playerHandSlot3Card.getCardText());

            playerHandSlot4Card = DrawCards.drawFromPlayerDeck();
            playerHandSlot4.setIcon(new ImageIcon(playerHandSlot4Card.getImage())); 
            playerHandSlot4.setToolTipText(playerHandSlot4Card.getCardText());

            playerHandSlot5Card = DrawCards.drawFromPlayerDeck();
            playerHandSlot5.setIcon(new ImageIcon(playerHandSlot5Card.getImage()));
            playerHandSlot5.setToolTipText(playerHandSlot5Card.getCardText());
        }
    if (DrawCards.player_1_deck.isEmpty())
        playerDeck.setIcon(playerDeckEmpty);
}                                       

Answer 1

Rather than creating a separate variable for each one of player's cards, use a List such as an ArrayList. You can create each element of the list as necessary like this:

private void playerDeckMouseClicked(java.awt.event.MouseEvent evt) {                                        
    ImageIcon playerDeckEmpty = new ImageIcon("C:\\DC Card       Game\\src\\DCCardGame\\resources\\Other Cards\\Empty Player Deck.png");

    if (DrawCards.player_1_deck.isEmpty())
        playerDeck.setIcon(playerDeckEmpty);

    for (int i = 0; i < 5 && !DrawCards.cards.isEmpty(); i++)
    {
            playerHandSlotCard = DrawCards.drawFromPlayerDeck();
            playerHandSlot.setIcon(new ImageIcon(playerHandSlot1Card.getImage()));
            playerHandSlot.setToolTipText(playerHandSlot1Card.getCardText());
            playerHandList.add(platerHandSlot);
    }
    if (DrawCards.player_1_deck.isEmpty())
        playerDeck.setIcon(playerDeckEmpty);
}

To display the many labels a player's hand contains, you can dynamically add them to a container. Rather than using a JLabel to display a player's hand, use a JPanel with a CardLayout. Whenever the player draw a card, call panel.add(playerHandSlot). If this happens outside the playerDeckMouseClicked method, you can use a for loop to access the elements of playerHandList

for(JLabel playerHandSlot : playerHandList) {
    panel.add(playerHandSlot);
}