java - looking up Swing components by their id? -

is possible reference swing object via lookup method ?? keeping multitude of instance variables every single ui element seems such overkill

ie kinda way done in javascript:

jtextarea ta = new jtextarea();
ta.setid("myjtextarea");
....
....
....
jtextarea ta = window.getelementbyid("myjtextarea");
ta.settext("blah");

ps. i'm not writing software space shuttle columbia. quick , dirty projects, best practices dont apply. thx.

private static component getcomponentbyid(container container, string componentid){          if(container.getcomponents().length > 0)         {             for(component c : container.getcomponents())             {                 if(componentid.equals(c.getname()))                 {                     return c;                 }                 if(c instanceof container)                 {                     return getcomponent((container) c, componentid);                 }             }         }          return null;      }