Are there any good books or website that go over creating a JTable? I want to make one column editable. I would like to actually put a inherited JCheckBox component (that we created here) into one of the table columns instead of just having the table put JCheckBox in based on it being an editable boolean field.
I have the JFC Swing Tutorial Second Edition book but I just would like to know if there are other examples I could look at and learn how to deal with the tables better. The book seems to just take the java 'trail' online and put it in the book.
I am re-reading the stuff though, just curious if anyone has found something that might help out more.
To make a column editable you have to override the isCellEditable method in the TableModel. Creating a TableModel is fairly easy if you inherit AbstractTableModel and I'd recommend it for all but the most simple JTables.
However, adapting the TableModel is only part of what you need to do. To actually get a custom component in the JTable, you need to set a custom cell renderer. To use an interactive custom component, you need to set a custom cell editor. In some cases, it's enough to use slightly modificated versions of the default classes for this.
Editors
If you already have got a custom component is easily done using delegation: Create a new class implementing TableCellEditor, and return a new instance of the component in the getCellEditorComponent method. The paramaters to this method include the current value as well as the cell coordinates, a link back to the table and wether or not the cell is selected.
The TableCellEditor also has a method that is called when the user commits a change to the cell contents (where you can validate user input and adjust the model) or cancels an edit. Be sure to call the stopEditing() method on your editor if you ever programmatically abort editing, otherwise the editor component will remain on screen -- this once took me like 2 hours to debug.
Note that within a JTable editors and only editors receive events! Displaying a button can be done using a renderer. But to get a functioning button, you need to implement an editor with the correct EventListeners registered. Registering a listener on a renderer does nothing.
Renderers
Implementing a renderer is not strictly necessary for what you describe in your question, but you typically end up doing it anyway, if only for minor modifications. Renderers, unlike editors, are speed critical. The getTableCellRendererComponent of a renderer is called once for every cell in the table! The component returned by a renderer is only used to paint the cell, not for interaction, and thus can be "reused" for the next cell. In other words, you should adjust the component (e.g. using setText(...) or setFont(...) if it is a TextComponent) in the renderer, you should not instantiate a new one -- that's an easy way to cripple the performance.
Caveats
Note that for renderers and editors to work, you need to tell the JTable when to use a certain renderer/editor. There are basically two ways to do this. You can set the default cell renderer/editor for a certain type using the respective JTable methods. For this way to work, your TableModel needs to return exactly this type in the getColumnClass(...) method! The default table model will not do this for you, it always returns Object.class. I'm sure that one has stumped a lot of people.
The other way to set the editor/renderer is by explicitly setting it on the column itself, that is, by getting the TableColumn via the getTableColumn(...) method of the JTable. This is a lot more elaborate, however, it's also the only way to have two different renderers/editors for a single class. E.g. your model might have two columns of class String which are rendered in entirely different ways, maybe once using a JLabel/DefaultRenderer and the other using a JButton to access a more elaborate editor.
JTable with its custom renderers and editors is extremely versatile, but it is also a lot to take in, and there are a lot of things to do wrong. Good luck!
How to Use Tables in The Swing Tutorial is mandatory reading for anyone customising JTables. In particular, read and reread Concepts: Editors and Renderers because it typically takes a while for it to "click". The examples on custom renderers and editors are also very worthwhile.
The class you want to look into extending to create your own behavior is DefaultTableModel. That will allow you to define your own behavior. A decent tutorial can be found on sun's site.
This tutorial from the java lobby is easy to follow. The online Swing trail for JTable that you reference indicates that it has been updated. Did you scan through the whole thing for possible better (isn't newer always better) information?
If you are trying to use a simple JTable with 1 column editable and you know the column location you could always use default table model and overload the isCellEditable call.
something like this :
myTable.setModel(new DefaultTableModel(){
#Override
public boolean isCellEditable(int row, int column) {
if (column == x) {
return true;
} else
return false;
}
});
And for the check box create a renderer class
MyCheckBoxRenderer extends JCheckBox implements TableCellRenderer
Some useful classes are:
Package javax.swing.table :
TableModel - Interface for a tablemodel
AbstractTableModel - Nice class to extend for creating your own table with custom data structures
DefaultTableModel - Default table model which can deal with arrays[] and Vectors
To disable editing on any cell you need to override the isCellEditable(int row, int col) method
in your table Model, you should override "isCellEditable" and "setValueAt" functions, like below.
Column 4 is the column for editable cells.
Then when you double click the cell and type something,
setValueAt() will be called and save the value to the tableModel's DO,field col4.
public ArrayList<XXXDO> tbmData = new ArrayList<XXXDO>(); //arraylist for data in table
#Override
public boolean isCellEditable(int row, int col) {
if (col == 4) {
return true;
} else {
return false;
}
}
#Override
public void setValueAt(Object value, int row, int col) {
if ((row >= 0) && (row < this.tbmData.size()) && (col >= 0) && (col < this.colNm.length)) {
if (col == 4) {
tbmData.get(row).col4= (String) value;
}
fireTableCellUpdated(row, col);
} else {
}
}
Related
I'm making a custom TableModel usingAbstractTableModelfor a project, and I need to figure out a way to have a checkbox show up on some rows, but not others. I have already implemented a getColumn method, but I want to be able to have a checkbox not show up unless a certain condition in another column is reached (for example, if the object represented by a particular row is a lightbulb rather than, say, a toaster, give the user a checkbox to turn the light on or off).
I've tried using getValueAt and passing null or a string instead of a Boolean object in the hopes that maybe Swing wouldn't render the checkbox. And it doesn't, but it also throws a nasty set of ClassCastExceptions for trying to cast a String to a Boolean.
Does anyone have any ideas on how I could do something like this?
Columns in a Swing JTable are displayed using cell renderers. You should read How to Use Tables in the Java tutorials which has a section that describes how the mechanism works. This is how the core method of a custom cell renderer looks like:
public Component getTableCellRendererComponent(JTable table, Object color,
boolean isSelected, boolean hasFocus,
int row, int column) {
The task of this method is to select and prepare a Component (by setting desired colors, fonts, images...) for a specific row and column that the framework will use paint on to its Graphics context. There is a DefaultTableCellRenderer that might do the trick without too much custom code (see the tutorial). Note that this rendering mechanism is an optimization chosen by the Swing developers.
You can also learn a lot about customizing Swing components in Swing Hacks. The examples are not especially well-designed code but just show how to make creative use of the Swing API.
Good luck!
Example (see comments):
final JTable orderTable = new JTable(dataModel);
// All columns with class Boolean are renderered with MyFancyItemRenderer
orderTable.setDefaultRenderer(Boolean.class, new MyFancyItemRenderer());
// Setting the cell renderers explicitly for each column
final TableColumnModel columnModel = orderTable.getColumnModel();
final TableColumn itemCountColumn = columnModel.getColumn(ITEM_COUNT);
itemCountColumn.setCellRenderer(new MyFancyItemRenderer());
// ...
final TableColumn sumColumn = columnModel.getColumn(SUM);
sumColumn.setCellRenderer(new MyFancyPriceRenderer());
I have problems regarding implementing JTable, specifically the AbstractTableModel. I can create and show data from JTable but my current scenario is different from my usually scenario.
What I want to do is to make my JTable accept an input from user and I want to put other components inside the JTable
Lets say for every row there is a JComboBox, JTextField and a JCheckBox, however when I start to implement the JTable model (AbstractTableModel) I don't know how can I put those components to my JTable?
Since the method getValue from AbstractTableModel return type is of object data types. Do you have any workaround for this kind of problems and by the ways I hate using DefaultTableModel since it lacks flexibility as much as possible I want an AbstractTableModel :) help is really appreciated.
You should definitely start with How to Use Tables and study the examples there. While a JTable ins't a spreadsheet, you can calculate derived values in your table's model. This example shows how to use a JComboBox to update other cells in the same row, and these examples similarly contrast the two TableModel implementations you mention. Finally, you can use an available ScriptEngine to evaluate simple arithmetic expressions. For example, the example below prints 42.0.
ScriptEngine engine = mgr.getEngineByExtension("js");
try {
System.out.println(engine.eval("5 * 8 + 2"));
} catch (ScriptException ex) {
ex.printStackTrace(System.err);
}
I've searched for this for quite a while and haven't found a clear example anywhere. I'm a Java newbee using NetBeans. I have a boolean value in the first column of a JTable (called "Enabled") and I have some plugin code that I need to call to see if it has the settings it needs in order to be enabled, and if not, display a message box and prevent Enabled from being checked.
All I really need is for a function to be called when the checkbox is checked and I can take it from there. Does anyone have an example of how to do this?
Thanks for your help!
Harry
You probably want a TableModelListener, as discussed in Listening for Data Changes. Alternatively, you can use a custom editor, as discussed in Concepts: Editors and Renderers and the following section.
All I really need is for a function to
be called when the checkbox is checked
When the checkbox is checked then the value will be changed in the model, which is probably not what your want. I would think you want to prevent the checking of the checkbox in the first place.
The way to prevent a cell from being editable is to override the isCellEditable(...) method of JTable. By overriding this method you can dynamically determine if the cell should be editable or not.
JTable table = new JTable( ... )
{
public boolean isCellEditable(int row, int column)
{
int modelColumn = convertColumnIndexToModel( column );
if (modelColumn == yourBooleanColumn)
return isTheBooleanForThisRowEditable(row);
else
return super.isCellEditable(row, column);
}
};
And a fancier approach would be to create a custom renderer so that the check box looks "disabled" even before the user attempts to click on the cell. See the link provided by trashgod on renderers.
In my JTable, I have two editable numeric columns. The editor for both columns extends AbstractCellEditor and uses a JFormattedTextField as an the editing component.
The problem is that the format for input depends on the value of another column in the row. If condition X is met, the number of fraction digits should be Y, otherwise they should be Y+2.
I attempted to override the getTableCellEditor(..) method to associate a TableCellEditor per row. See this example. However, since I have two editable columns, sharing a single TableCellEditor object per row gives some very odd results. I don't think this is an appropriate solution.
Any ideas on how to approach this would be much appreciated!
Thank you!
I don't think you need to associate a TableCellEditor per row.
You only need one , which will access other data by himself. in the getTableCellEditor(), you have access to the table, as well as the coordinates (column, row).
With this, you can ask directly the table for its value at the wanted column, for the current row.
Keep in mind that like renderers, cell editors are "shared". You are indeed asking the same object to provide you the editor component (which is most of the time the TableCellEditor itself, extending a JFormattedTextField, for example). So you don't need to put one per row, the method getTableCellEditor() will be called, with the current column and row indexes, and you will provide the component, with the appropriate format, depending on the condition..
Something like this:
public Component getTableCellEditorComponent(JTable table,
Object value,
boolean isSelected,
int row,
int column)
{
Object data = table.getValueAt(row, CONDITION_COLUMN);
if (data is something)
this.setFormat(FORMAT1);
else
this.setFormat(FORMAT2);
return this;
}
You can solve it by creating yet another TableCellEditor which will delegate to either of its two subcontractors: the instances of your current cell editors. You need to register this uber-celleditor with the column and let it delegate whenever it is used by Swing.
I would override the getCellEditor(...) method of JTable. Then you can return the appropriate editor based on the format of the data.
I was looking for an answer for a previous question and had an ingenious idea to overcome a limit on JTable. I need the editor to be different on a row by row basis, whereas JTable can only handle a single editor for each column.
So my idea is to use a MouseListener to check the row and column on the JTable and set new editor each time.
But, calling setCellEditor() a second time do not have any effect. The editor remains to be the first one that was set. So how can I make "setCellEditor" work a second time for the same column?
Here's the code in MouseListener.
public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e) {
int cols = resultTable.columnAtPoint(new Point(e.getX(), e.getY()));
int rows = resultTable.rowAtPoint(new Point(e.getX(), e.getY()));
StorageObject item = (StorageObject) resultTable.getModel().getValueAt(rows, cols);
TableColumn col = resultTable.getColumnModel().getColumn(cols);
col.setCellEditor(new MyComboBoxEditor(item.list));
}
I'm not sure why your code isn't working (it's been a while since I've done Swing), but why don't you just override
public TableCellEditor getCellEditor(int row, int column)
On your JTable? Maintain a map of the combo boxes you want to use for each row and in your overriden method return the correct one.
My theory is that when all the mouse listeners registered to the Table/TableCell are invoked, the ones installed to the API classes by default will be invoked first, before your mouse listener. This means the event causing the editor to be fetched will occur before you set it to a different one. Kind of like a race condition, only it's actually defined somewhere in the API source code... That's my naive theory and I can already see some holes in it, so on to my solution:
Override JTable.getCellEditor(int row, int col). This allows you to return whatever editor you want for any cell.