Swing JTable custom rendering - java

I have this kind of progamming task without JavaFx, instead it's Java Swing. I realized my knowledge is still limited.
I have one single JTable.
But, within this JTable I need a custome Cell Renderer.
The goal is to make this kind of JTable: Example image
My current solutions are: Example Image
Create a Single JTable:
get each Column and set its CellRenderer with a custom Renderer (below).
Create a new Class implements TableCellRenderer:
return different JPanel inside getTableCellRendererComponent
method using switch case (as column counted).
After hours, and hours, I think my current solutions is quite daunting tasks. Thus, My question is:
What are the simplest method of creating this Custom JTable to achieve the main goal as mentioned above?


you have two options
1) JPanel nested another JComponents and solve that by using standard LayoutManagers note scrolling isn't natural nor nice
2) JTable with JPanel can solve that, notice about scrolling inner JScrollPane inside another JScrollPane


I've been facing this problem for a while, and I decided to do it myself. Extending the existing implementation of a table, adding some concepts for what I expect from a table, and writting some editors/listeners for that. All the same, but with a treetable.
I'm working on this project called SUMI.
It contains a java package (ar.com.tellapic.sumi.treetable) that is an extension of a JXTreeTable from SwingLabs.
The project is being developed and I didn't provide any documentation yet. You can do what you want by creating a renderer and if needed, an editor, for lastly attaching actions to each object.
If you decide to use it and you need help, email me, I'll help you without any problem.
Or, you could read the source by your own.
Regards,
EDITED (again):
To clear a little bit this answer, I've just created a wiki page in the project wiki and put the relevant code there. If someone feels that the code should be inserted here, please let me know.
Basically, I try to explain how to find a straight solution to the renderer/editor problems you may find using JTable with your specifics needs by using part of my project, in order to get something like this:
Note that the screenshot was taken after clicking on the respective tick-button.


Once you create a nested panel for one row, as suggested by #mKorbel, you can add any number of them to a GridLayout(0, 1) in a JScrollPane. If rendering many rows becomes an issue, you can adopt the same approach used by JTable, illustrated here.


Even though, JTable can be customized to whatever you desire through cell renderer and cell editors, it is never preferred because you have to do a lot of messy codings for that. Instead, for your problem, I suggest to use JScrollPane and add your component (view panel as your sample jTable ) to its viewPort.
For this implementation, represent each rows with your custom class that extends JPanel. And add the required row components (that may be any components like jlabel, jtextfields or even jpanel too) in it. For the simplicity, you can use null layout for the row panel and add the components at any location you want.
I hope this will help you workout with your problem. If you got any problem in this implementation, feel free you ask again.

Related

JList and ListCellEditor?

I have a Swing application that shows a list of complex objects to the user. These are nicely rendered using a ListCellRender, which fills a JPanel with more UI controls. Obviously editing does not work and the components are not enabled to accept input.
Now I want the user to be able to edit the entries. Basically you could think of in-place editing. I tried to simply enable the panel that renders the list entries - but it does not work. What else could/should I do to have an editable list?

So basically the answer is to favour JTable over JList. For anyone questioning that, the JTable can be configured to show one column only, and the difference would not be visible to the user.
Programming wise JTable is more complex and thus justifies that JList is used in simple cases (only one columne, no editing required).

Creating mixed components in swing + java

Is there any way to create a custom component in swing. By custom I mean say right now I am able to create a circle and do actions like dragging it etc.
But now I also want that along with the circle a text label with its number is also present. Can we combine them into a new type of component where say we can do actions on it collectively?
If yes please give me pointers on how to do so.

Yes, just extend JComponent and handle painting and interaction however you want. If there is a component that already does most of what you want you could extend that class and tweak it slightly.
I would suggest reading some of the tutorials about how JComponent works:
http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/components/jcomponent.html
Here is a similar question but I am sure you can find more specific ones that have been asked once you get deeper into it.
How to create a custom Swing Component
The Swing tutorial as a whole if very useful to understand how other components work etc.
http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/components/index.html

You can create your own Swing component extending JComponent. Several question here on Stack on the topic like this one.
Personally, I advise you to get this book: Java Swing as it contains an excellent guide on how to create Swing components.

How do I prevent button surround from displaying in Java?

Sorry for the odd choice of words for the title, however, "border" seems to be the inappropriate term. While it is true that the visible line surrounding an icon in a JToggleButton can be made invisible by using setBorderPainted(false), the same is not true for JCheckBox and JRadioButton.
I can not use the JToggleButton and therefore need to use either the JCheckBox or JRadioButton (or some derivative of JToggleButton I am not aware of), but need the square or circle, respectively, to be non-visible when there is no icon on the button. Also, using setVisible(false) eliminates the button from the layout, however, I need the space to be reserved and not have the component layout change (using GroupLayout).
Any suggestions? Am I going to have to create a custom renderer? I will be looking at that in the mean time.

The route into this would be through customising the look at feel by changing some of the UI properties in the UImanager (the sort of thing that allows you to make simple tweaks with fonts and colours and presumably the images used for the checkboxes or radiobuttons) -- but it's many years since I last did that sort of thing and can't remember the details.
A little Googling turned up this project to inspect current property values, so might at least help with indicating the right part of the APIs to be looking at.

You have to choices here:
1) Customize Look and Feel as described in previous entry.
2) Create your own custom controls by inheriting from existing ones and overriding component painting.

I found a cheap and easy (read hack) for this. I created an empty transparent icon and used it when I didn't want any item to be displayed.

Is there a possible Control for this?

I'm currently using net beans with Java to work on a senior project. Essentially the program is going to create word search puzzles.
While I'm still a few weeks from needing a solution, I'm having difficulty thinking of a possible control that could display a word search puzzle (not to be mistaken for a crossword puzzle).

My initial thought would be to have a grid of subclassed JPanels stored in another subclass of JPanel [as a 2D array, or something].
You could then attach MouseListeners to the grid cell JPanels if you need to detect if they've been clicked on, or whatever

Might give you an idea
brainjar - Wordsearch (source at bottom of page)
What do you mean by control? Maybe something like a JTable + Custom ListSelectionModel

Java GUI LayoutManagers

I'm busy with an asignment where i have to make a graphical interface for a simple program. But i'm strugling with the layout.
This is the idea:
What is the easiest way to accomplish such a layout?
And what method do you use to make layouts in java. Just code it, or use an IDE like netbeans?

And what method do you use to make layouts in java. Just code it, or use an IDE like netbeans?
NetBeans for GUI developers is like a calculator for grade schoolers: you really shouldn't use it until you know how to do things without it, but then it will save you a lot of time.
(I'd love to answer your primary question, but the firewall I'm behind is blocking the picture.)

Well considering how simple the layout is I would suggest you use a BorderLayout with NORTH set to the top section in a container and the JTable in the CENTER of the BorderLayout. For the Top it appears to be a simple BorderLayout again with NORTH as the Instruction: south as the black box (possibly in a container with a FlowLayout). The center of the top pane appears to be 2 Containers of GridLayouts with 2 rows and 2 columns, so put thos in another container with a GirdLayout.
So in pseudo:
Container(BorderLayout)
{
#NORTH
Container(BorderLayout)
{
#NORTH
Label(Instruction);
#CENTER
Container(GridLayout(2,1))
{
Container(GirdLayout(2,2))
{
Label() TextField()
Label() TextField()
}
Container(GirdLayout(2,2))
{
Label() TextField()
Label() TextField()
}
}
#SOUTH
Container(FlowLayout())
{
JButton() //shaded thing?
}
}
#CENTER
{
JTable
}
}

I build everything by hand. Like Christian, I've had bad experiences with GUI builders; they always either refused to configure a couple of components quite right, or they generated huge amounts of unnecessary code which made later maintenance impractical, or both.
I used to do build a lot of UIs using GridBagLayout, but for years, I've never seen an office-environment UI that couldn't be built with nested BorderLayouts, GridLayouts, and the occasional BoxLayout or FlowLayout. About 98% of the stuff I've seen is doable with nested BorderLayouts.
In your case, the layout organization will be as bmeck says. Speaking from memory, using CENTER for the JTable (remember to put it in a JScrollPane!) and NORTH for everything else ensures that if you resize your JFrame, the JTable will get all of the extra space, and that should be exactly what you want. For the top labels and fields, the nested GridLayouts should ensure that each "column" of labels and fields will take up equal horizontal space. (They'll get only enough vertical space to be completely visible, and no more, since the JTable is taking up everything else.)
Everything else is just a matter of adding borders and setting the GridLayout padding reasonably.

For myself gui-builders for swing or swt never worked that well that's why i code layouts myself using layout managers.
Your question doesn't mention which gui-system you are using but i assume you want to use swing. If that's the case I would recommend to use GridBagLayout for your layout. It is not that easy to use in the beginning but as soon as you know how it works you can do most layouts in the way you want it to be and i think it is also the layoutmanager of choice for the layout you want to do.

I've used GUI layout generating tools for super rapid development (maybe get the first 2 or 3 iterations of an interface out of the way). I've ultimately found that using a simple fixed layout (no layout manager) with these tools is the best approach. Once we are starting to hone in on a design, we switch to manual layout.
Whenever I've tried to use GUI generators to create code for layout managers, I've almost always been bitten eventually where the layout would just stop working and I spent more time debugging the impossible to read auto-generated code than if I'd done the layout by hand anyway. For what it's worth, when we are doing the early phase of layouts, we use the Jigloo plugin for Eclipse. It's very inexpensive, and does a good job.
I'm a big fan of MiGLayout. I've found that it is incredibly easy to use for simple layouts, and is capable of doing extremely complicated layouts. All without the need to resort to nested panels, etc... JGoodies Forms is also good, but harder to use.

I wrote an article a while back on layout managers:
http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/onlineTraining/GUI/AWTLayoutMgr
It describes how nesting (as bmeck above demonstrates) can be used very effectively for many UI designs.

Try table layout. Works great.
https://tablelayout.dev.java.net/

Use GroupLayout
:)
All the alignments are pretty easy to do

I used to love Motif's XmForm for this sort of thing. In Java, I usually put Boxes inside of boxes. So I have a vertical box. First row of the box contains a JLabel for the Instruction. Second row contains something for the label/result stuff, possibly some sort of grid. Third row contains whatever that blacked out thing, Fourth row contains the JTable. Then I'd spend some time to try to figure out how to do the lable/result stuff. Then I'd probably end up saying "dammit", and doing it as a GridBagLayout.

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