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Trail: Creating a GUI with JFC/Swing
Lesson: Using Swing Components

How to Use Tables

With the JTable(in the API reference documentation) class you can display tables of data, optionally allowing the user to edit the data. JTable doesn't contain or cache data; it's simply a view of your data. Here's a picture of a typical table displayed within a scroll pane:

A snapshot of TableDemo, which displays a typical table.

The rest of this section tells you how to accomplish some common table-related tasks. Here are the topics this section covers:

Creating a Simple Table

A snapshot of SimpleTableDemo, which displays a simple table.

Try this: 
  1. Compile and run SimpleTableDemo. The source file is SimpleTableDemo.java(in a .java source file).
    See Getting Started with Swing if you need help compiling or running this application.
  2. Click the cell that contains "Snowboarding".
    The entire first row is selected, indicating that you have selected Mary Campione's data. A special highlight indicates that the "Snowboarding" cell is editable. Generally, you begin editing a text cell by double-clicking it.
  3. Position the cursor over "First Name". Now press the mouse button and drag to the right.
    As you can see, users can rearrange columns in tables.
  4. Position the cursor just to the right of a column header. Now press the mouse button and drag to the right or left.
    The column changes size, and the other columns adjust to fill the remaining space.
  5. Resize the window containing the table so that it's bigger than necessary to display the whole table.
    All the table cells become larger, expanding to fill the extra space.
Here is the code that implements the table in SimpleTableDemo.java(in a .java source file): 
Object[][] data = {
    {"Mary", "Campione", 
     "Snowboarding", new Integer(5), new Boolean(false)},
    {"Alison", "Huml", 
     "Rowing", new Integer(3), new Boolean(true)},
    {"Kathy", "Walrath",
     "Chasing toddlers", new Integer(2), new Boolean(false)},
    {"Mark", "Andrews",
     "Speed reading", new Integer(20), new Boolean(true)},
    {"Angela", "Lih",
     "Teaching high school", new Integer(4), new Boolean(false)}
};

String[] columnNames = {"First Name", 
                        "Last Name",
                        "Sport",
                        "# of Years",
                        "Vegetarian"};

final JTable table = new JTable(data, columnNames);
The SimpleTableDemo example uses one of two JTable constructors that directly accept data: The advantage of these constructors is that they're easy to use. However, these constructors also have disadvantages: If you want to get around these restrictions, you need to implement your own table model, as described in Creating a Table Model.

Adding a Table to a Container

It's easy to put a table in a scroll pane. You need just one or two lines of code: 
JScrollPane scrollPane = new JScrollPane(table);
table.setPreferredScrollableViewportSize(new Dimension(500, 70));
The scroll pane automatically gets the table's header, which displays the column names, and puts it on top of the table. Even when the user scrolls down, the column names remain visible at the top of the viewing area. The scroll table also tries to make its viewing area the same as the table's preferred viewing size. The previous code snippet sets the table's preferred viewing size with the setPreferredScrollableViewportSize method.
Version Note:  Before Swing 1.0.2, the scroll pane didn't get the table header unless you created the scroll pane using the JTable.createScrollPaneForTable method. Here are examples of the recommended code, before and after Swing 1.0.2: 

//1.0.1 code (causes deprecation warning
//in 1.0.2 and later releases):
scrollPane = JTable.createScrollPaneForTable(table);


//Recommended code (causes missing column names in 1.0.1):
scrollPane = new JScrollPane(table);

If you're using a table without a scroll pane, then you must get the table header component and place it yourself. For example: 

container.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
container.add(table.getTableHeader(), BorderLayout.NORTH);
container.add(table, BorderLayout.CENTER);

Setting and Changing Column Widths

By default, all columns in a table start out with equal width, and the columns automatically fill the entire width of the table. When the table becomes wider or narrower (which might happen when the user resizes the window containing the table), all the column widths change appropriately.

When the user resizes a column by dragging its right border, then either other columns must change size, or the table's size must change. By default, the table's size remains the same, and all columns to the right of the drag point resize to accommodate space added or removed from the column to the left of the drag point.

The following figures illustrate the default resizing behavior.

SimpleTableDemo
Initially, the columns have equal width.

SimpleTableDemo during resizing
When the user resizes a column, some of the other columns must adjust size for the table to stay the same size.

SimpleTableDemo after the entire table is resized
When the entire table is resized, all the columns are resized.

To customize initial column widths, you can invoke setPreferredWidth on each of your table's columns. This sets both the preferred widths of the columns and their approximate relative widths. For example, adding the following code to SimpleTableDemo makes its third column bigger than the other columns: 

TableColumn column = null;
for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
    column = table.getColumnModel().getColumn(i);
    if (i == 2) {
        column.setPreferredWidth(100); //sport column is bigger
    } else {
        column.setPreferredWidth(50);
    }
}
Version Note:  The setPreferredWidth method was first introduced in Swing 1.1 Beta 2. For previous releases, you must use setMinWidth instead, making sure to invoke it on every column. (Otherwise, the columns you miss will be very thin.)

As the preceding code shows, each column in a table is represented by a TableColumn(in the API reference documentation) object. Besides setPreferredWidth, TableColumn also supplies methods for getting and setting the minimum, current, and maximum width of a column. For an example of setting cell widths based on the actual amount of space needed to draw the cells' contents, see the initColumnSizes method in TableRenderDemo.java(in a .java source file), which is discussed in Further Customizing Table Display and Event Handling.

When the user explicitly resizes columns, the new sizes become not only the columns' new current widths, but also the columns' new preferred widths, However, when columns are resized as the result of the table width changing, the columns' preferred widths do not change.

You can change a table's resize behavior by invoking the setAutoResizeMode method. The method's argument should have one of these values (defined as constants in JTable):

AUTO_RESIZE_SUBSEQUENT_COLUMNS
The default. In addition to resizing the column to the left of the drag point, adjusts the sizes of all columns to the right of the drag point.
AUTO_RESIZE_NEXT_COLUMN
Adjusts only the columns immediately to the left and right of the drag point.
AUTO_RESIZE_OFF
Adjust the table size instead.
Version Note:  Before the Swing 1.1 Beta release, the default resize mode was AUTO_RESIZE_ALL_COLUMNS. However, that mode isn't intuitive, so we changed the default mode to a mode added in Swing 1.1 Beta: AUTO_RESIZE_SUBSEQUENT_COLUMNS.

Detecting User Selections

The following code snippet shows how to detect when the user selects a table row. By default, a table allows the user to select multiple rows -- not columns or individual cells -- and the selected rows need not be next to each other. Using the setSelectionMode method, the following code specifies that only one row at a time can be selected. You can find the entire program in SimpleTableSelectionDemo.java(in a .java source file). 
table.setSelectionMode(ListSelectionModel.SINGLE_SELECTION);
...
ListSelectionModel rowSM = table.getSelectionModel();
rowSM.addListSelectionListener(new ListSelectionListener() {
    public void valueChanged(ListSelectionEvent e) {
        //Ignore extra messages.
        if (e.getValueIsAdjusting()) return;
        
        ListSelectionModel lsm =
            (ListSelectionModel)e.getSource();
        if (lsm.isSelectionEmpty()) {
            ...//no rows are selected
        } else {
            int selectedRow = lsm.getMinSelectionIndex();
            ...//selectedRow is selected
        }
    }
});

SimpleTableSelectionDemo.java(in a .java source file) also has code (not included in the preceding snippet) that changes the table's selection orientation. By changing a couple of boolean values, you can make the table allow either column selections or individual cell selections, instead of row selections.

For more information and examples of implementing selection, see How to Write a List Selection Listener.

Creating a Table Model

As the following figure shows, every table gets its data from an object that implements the TableModel(in the API reference documentation) interface.

TableDemo

The JTable constructor used by SimpleTableDemo creates its table model with code like this: 
new AbstractTableModel() {
    public String getColumnName(int col) { 
        return columnNames[col].toString(); 
    }
    public int getRowCount() { return rowData.length; }
    public int getColumnCount() { return columnNames.length; }
    public Object getValueAt(int row, int col) { 
        return rowData[row][col]; 
    }
    public boolean isCellEditable(int row, int col)
        { return true; }
    public void setValueAt(Object value, int row, int col) {
        rowData[row][col] = value;
	fireTableCellUpdated(row, col);
    }
}
As the preceding code shows, implementing a table model can be simple. Generally, you implement your table model in a subclass of the AbstractTableModel(in the API reference documentation) class.

Your model might hold its data in an array, vector, or hashtable, or it might get the data from an outside source such as a database. It might even generate the data at execution time. For examples of getting data from a database, see the table examples provided as part of the JFC/Swing and Java 2 Standard Edition SDK releases.

Version Note: In JFC/Swing-only releases (for use with JDK 1.1) the table examples are in the examples/Table directory. In 1.2, the table examples are in the demo/jfc/Table directory. In 1.3, the examples move to the demo/jfc/TableExamples directory. In 1.4, the directory is demo/jfc/TableExample (no final s).

Here again is a picture of a table implemented by TableDemo, which has a custom table model:

A snapshot of TableDemo. Again.

This table is different from the SimpleTableDemo table in the following ways:

Below is the code from TableDemo.java(in a .java source file) that is different from the code in SimpleTableDemo.java(in a .java source file). Bold font indicates the code that makes this table's model different from the table model defined automatically in SimpleTableDemo. 

public TableDemo() {
    ...
    MyTableModel myModel = new MyTableModel();
    JTable table = new JTable(myModel);
    table.setPreferredScrollableViewportSize(
              new Dimension(500, 70));

    //Create the scroll pane and add the table to it. 
    JScrollPane scrollPane = new JScrollPane(table);

    //Add the scroll pane to this window.
    setContentPane(scrollPane);
    ...
}

class MyTableModel extends AbstractTableModel {
    final String[] columnNames = ...//same as before...
    final Object[][] data = ...//same as before...

    public int getColumnCount() {
        return columnNames.length;
    }
    
    public int getRowCount() {
        return data.length;
    }

    public String getColumnName(int col) {
        return columnNames[col];
    }

    public Object getValueAt(int row, int col) {
        return data[row][col];
    }

    public Class getColumnClass(int c) {
        return getValueAt(0, c).getClass();
    }

    /*
     * Don't need to implement this method unless your table's
     * editable.
     */
    public boolean isCellEditable(int row, int col) {
        //Note that the data/cell address is constant,
        //no matter where the cell appears onscreen.
        if (col < 2) { 
            return false;
        } else {
            return true;
        }
    }

    /*
     * Don't need to implement this method unless your table's
     * data can change.
     */
    public void setValueAt(Object value, int row, int col) {
        ...//debugging code not shown...
        ...//ugly special handling of Integers not shown...
        data[row][col] = value;
        fireTableCellUpdated(row, col);
        ...//debugging code not shown...
    }
    ...

Detecting Data Changes

A table and its model automatically detect whenever the user edits the table's data. However, if the data changes for another reason, you must take special steps to notify the table and its model of the data change. Also, if you don't implement a table model, as in SimpleTableDemo, then you must take special steps to find out when the user edits the table's data.

An example of updating a table's data without directly editing it is in the BINGO application. The BINGO application, which is presented in BINGO!(in the Creating a GUI with JFC/Swing trail), has a table that displays some information about each user who is signed up to play the game. When a new user signs up to play BINGO, the table needs to add a new row for that user. More precisely, the table model needs to get the data for the new user, and then the table model needs to tell the table to display the new data.

To notify the table model about a new user, the BINGO application invokes the table model's updatePlayer method. You can see the code for that method in PlayerInfoModel(in a .java source file), which contains the implementation of the table model. The updatePlayer method records the new user's data and fires a table-model event. Because every table listens for table-model events from its model, the user-information table automatically detects the change and displays the new data.

To fire the table-model event, the model invokes the fireTableRowsInserted method, which is defined by the AbstractTableModel class. Other fireXxxx methods that AbstractTableModel defines to help you fire table-model events are fireTableCellUpdated, fireTableChanged, fireTableDataChanged, fireTableRowsDeleted, fireTableRowsInserted, fireTableRowsUpdated, and fireTableStructureChanged.

If you have a class such as SimpleTableDemo that isn't a table or table model, but needs to react to changes in a table model, then you need to do something special to find out when the user edits the table's data. Specifically, you need to register a table-model listener on the table model. Adding the bold code in the following snippet makes SimpleTableDemo react to table data changes. 

public class SimpleTableDemo ... implements TableModelListener {
    ...
    public SimpleTableDemo() {
        ...
	model = table.getModel();
        model.addTableModelListener(this);
        ...
    }

    public void tableChanged(TableModelEvent e) {
        ...
        int row = e.getFirstRow();
        int column = e.getColumn();
        String columnName = model.getColumnName(column);
        Object data = model.getValueAt(row, column);

        ...// Do something with the data...
    }
    ...
}

Concepts: Cell Editors and Renderers

Before you go on to the next few tasks, you need to understand how tables draw their cells. You might expect each cell in a table to be a component. However, for performance reasons, Swing tables aren't implemented that way.

Instead, a single cell renderer is used to draw all of the cells in a column. Often, this cell renderer is shared between all columns that contain the same type of data. You can think of the renderer as a configurable ink stamp that the table uses to stamp appropriately formatted data onto each cell. When the user starts to edit a cell's data, a cell editor takes over the cell, controlling the cell's editing behavior.

For example, each cell in the # of Years column in TableDemo contains Number data -- specifically, an Integer object. By default, the cell renderer for a Number-containing column uses a single JLabel instance to draw the appropriate numbers, right-aligned, on the column's cells. If the user begins editing one of the cells, the default cell editor uses a right-aligned JTextField to control the cell editing.

To choose the renderer that displays the cells in a column, a table first determines whether the you specified a renderer for that particular column. (We'll tell you how to specify renderers a bit later.) If you didn't, then the table invokes the table model's getColumnClass method, which gets the data type of the column's cells. Next, the table compares the column's data type with a list of data types for which cell renderers are registered. This list is initialized by the table, but you can add to it or change it. Currently, tables put the following types of data in the list:

The table chooses cell editors using a similar algorithm.

Remember that if you let a table create its own model, it uses Object as the type of every column. TableDemo.java(in a .java source file) shows how to specify more precise column types.

The next few sections tell you how to customize cell display and editing by specifying cell renderers and editors either by column or by data type,

Validating User-Entered Text

In the table examples you've seen so far, the user can enter any text into the # of Years column. SimpleTableDemo doesn't check the data's value, at all. The TableDemo example is slightly improved in that when the user is done editing, the code checks whether the entry can be parsed as an integer. However, TableDemo must use a bit of ugly code to convert the string returned by the default cell editor into an Integer. If it didn't do the conversion, then the actual type of the data would change from Integer to String.
Version Note: As of 1.3, the ugly conversion code is unnecessary because the default text cell editor automatically converts the data into the proper type.

What we'd really like to do is to check the user's input while the user is typing, and to have the cell editor return an Integer instead of a string. You can accomplish one or both of these tasks by using a custom text field to control the cell editing.

A custom text field can check the user's input either while the user is typing, or after the user has indicated the end of typing (such as by pressing return). We call these two types of checking change-validation and action-validation, respectively.

The following code, taken from TableEditDemo.java(in a .java source file), sets up a change-validated text field. The bold line of code makes the text field the editor for all columns that contain data of type Integer. 

final WholeNumberField integerField = new WholeNumberField(0, 5);
integerField.setHorizontalAlignment(WholeNumberField.RIGHT);

DefaultCellEditor integerEditor = 
    new DefaultCellEditor(integerField) {
        //Override DefaultCellEditor's getCellEditorValue method
        //to return an Integer, not a String:
        public Object getCellEditorValue() {
            return new Integer(integerField.getValue());
        }
    };
table.setDefaultEditor(Integer.class, integerEditor);
The WholeNumberField(in a .java source file) class used above is a custom JTextField subclass that allows the user to enter only digits. The getValue method returns the int value of the WholeNumberField's contents. See How to Use Text Fields for more information about WholeNumberField. That section also provides a more general-purpose validating text field, called DecimalField, that you can customize so that it validates any number format that you specify.

Using a Combo Box as an Editor

Here is an example of setting up a combo box editor. The bold line of code sets up the combo box as the editor for a column, rather than for a specific data type. 
TableColumn sportColumn = table.getColumnModel().getColumn(2);
...
JComboBox comboBox = new JComboBox();
comboBox.addItem("Snowboarding");
comboBox.addItem("Rowing");
comboBox.addItem("Chasing toddlers");
comboBox.addItem("Speed reading");
comboBox.addItem("Teaching high school");
comboBox.addItem("None");
sportColumn.setCellEditor(new DefaultCellEditor(comboBox));
Here is a picture of the combo box editor in use:

A combo box cell editor in use

The combo box editor is implemented in TableRenderDemo.java(in a .java source file), which is discussed some more in Further Customizing Table Display and Event Handling.

Specifying Other Editors

As the previous sections showed, you can set the editor for an entire column using the TableColumn setCellEditor method, or for a specific type of data using the JTable setDefaultEditor method. For both methods, you must specify an argument that implements the TableCellEditor interface. Fortunately, the DefaultCellEditor class implements this interface and provides constructors to let you specify an editing component that's a JTextField, JCheckBox, or JComboBox. You usually don't have to explicitly specify a check box as an editor, since columns with Boolean data automatically use a check box renderer and editor.

What if you want to specify an editor that isn't a text field, check box, or combo box? Well, because DefaultCellEditor doesn't support other types of components, you must do a little more work. You need to create a subclass of the desired editor component, and the subclass must implement the TableCellEditor(in the API reference documentation) interface. Then you set up the component as an editor for a data type or column, using the setDefaultEditor or setCellEditor method, respectively.

Version Note: The AbstractCellEditor class, which was added in 1.3, makes it much easier to add support for non-standard editor components. We plan to add an example of using it. For now, you can find information in the JTable release document and the API documentation for AbstractCellEditor(in the API reference documentation).

Here is a picture of a table with a dialog that serves, indirectly, as a cell editor. When the user begins editing a cell in the Favorite Color column, a button (the true cell editor) appears and brings up the dialog, with which the user can choose a different color.

The cell editor brings up a dialog

You can find the code in TableDialogEditDemo.java(in a .java source file). The example also requires WholeNumberField.java(in a .java source file).

Further Customizing Table Display and Event Handling

You've already seen how to specify cell editors. You can also specify renderers for cells and for column headers. Customizing renderers lets you display data in custom ways and specify tool tip text for the table to display.

Although renderers determine how each cell or column header looks, they don't handle events. To pick up the events that take place inside a table, you should choose the appropriate technique for the sort of event you're interested in. For a cell that's being edited, the editor should process events. To detect row/column/cell selections and deselections, use a selection listener as described in Detecting User Selections. To detect mouse clicks on a column header, you can register a mouse listener on the table header. (See TableSorter.java(in a .java source file) for an example.) To detect other events, you can register the appropriate listener on the JTable object.

Creating a custom renderer can be as easy as creating a subclass of an existing component and then implementing the single method in the TableCellRenderer(in the API reference documentation) interface. In the preceding figure, the color renderer used for Favorite Color cells is a subclass of JLabel. You can find the code for the renderer in the ColorRenderer inner class in TableDialogEditDemo.java(in a .java source file). Here is the code that registers a ColorRenderer instance as the default renderer for all Color data: 

table.setDefaultRenderer(Color.class, new ColorRenderer(true));
You can even specify a cell-specific renderer, if you like. To do this, you need to define a JTable subclass that overrides the getCellRenderer method. For example, the following code makes the first cell in the first column of the table use a custom renderer: 
TableCellRenderer weirdRenderer = new WeirdRenderer();
table = new JTable(...) {
    public TableCellRenderer getCellRenderer(int row, int column) {
	if ((row == 0) && (column == 0)) {
	    return weirdRenderer;
	}
	// else...
	return super.getCellRenderer(row, column);
    }
};

To add tool tips to cells or column headers, you need to get or create the cell or header renderer, and then use the setToolTipText method of the renderer's component. TableRenderDemo.java(in a .java source file) adds tool tips to both the cells and header for the Sport column with the following code: 

//Set up tool tips for the sport cells.
DefaultTableCellRenderer renderer =
        new DefaultTableCellRenderer();
renderer.setToolTipText("Click for combo box");
sportColumn.setCellRenderer(renderer);

//Set up tool tip for the sport column header.
TableCellRenderer headerRenderer = sportColumn.getHeaderRenderer();
if (headerRenderer instanceof DefaultTableCellRenderer) {
    ((DefaultTableCellRenderer)headerRenderer).setToolTipText(
             "Click the sport to see a list of choices");
}
Version Note: As of 1.3, the getHeaderRenderer method returns null by default. To find the default header renderer, you instead use the new getDefaultRenderer method, which is defined in JTableHeader. For example, in the preceding snippet the red-colored code should be changed to this: 
TableCellRenderer headerRenderer = table.getTableHeader().
        getDefaultRenderer();
You can find the 1.3 version of TableRenderDemo.java in example-1dot3/TableRenderDemo.java(in a .java source file).

An interesting feature of TableRenderDemo is how it determines the sizes of its columns. For each column, TableRenderDemo gets the components used to render that column's header and cells. It then asks the components how much space they need. Finally, it uses the space information to set the column's width. 

TableColumn column = null;
Component comp = null;
int headerWidth = 0;
int cellWidth = 0;
Object[] longValues = model.longValues;

for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
    column = table.getColumnModel().getColumn(i);

    comp = column.getHeaderRenderer().
                     getTableCellRendererComponent(
                         null, column.getHeaderValue(), 
                         false, false, 0, 0);
    headerWidth = comp.getPreferredSize().width;

    comp = table.getDefaultRenderer(model.getColumnClass(i)).
                     getTableCellRendererComponent(
                         table, longValues[i],
                         false, false, 0, i);
    cellWidth = comp.getPreferredSize().width;
    ...//debugging code not shown...
    column.setPreferredWidth(Math.max(headerWidth, cellWidth));
}

...//In the model:
public final Object[] longValues = {"Angela", "Andrews", 
                                    "Teaching high school",
                                    new Integer(20), Boolean.TRUE};
Version Note: Because the 1.3 getHeaderRenderer method returns null by default, you generally use the 1.3 getDefaultRenderer method instead. For example, the red code from the previous snippet would be replaced with this: 
    table.getTableHeader().getDefaultRenderer()
You can find the 1.3 version of TableRenderDemo.java in example-1dot3/TableRenderDemo.java(in a .java source file).

Sorting and Otherwise Manipulating Data

One way to perform data manipulation such as sorting is to use one or more specialized table models (data manipulators), in addition to the table model that provides the data (the data model). The data manipulators should sit between the table and the data model, as the following picture shows:

A data manipulator sits between a table and its model.

You can use the TableMap and TableSorter classes when implementing your data manipulator. TableMap.java(in a .java source file) implements TableModel and serves as a superclass for data manipulators. TableSorter.java(in a .java source file) is a TableMap subclass that sorts the data provided by another table model. You can either change these classes, using them as a basis for writing your own data manipulator, or use the classes as-is to provide sorting functionality.

To implement sorting with TableSort, you need just three lines of code. The following listing shows the differences between TableDemo and its sorting cousin, TableSorterDemo.java(in a .java source file). 

TableSorter sorter = new TableSorter(myModel); //ADDED THIS
//JTable table = new JTable(myModel);          //OLD
JTable table = new JTable(sorter);             //NEW
sorter.addMouseListenerToHeaderInTable(table); //ADDED THIS
The addMouseListenerToHeaderInTable method adds a mouse listener that detects clicks over the column headers. When the listener detects a click, it sorts the rows based on the clicked column. As the following snapshot shows, when you click "Last Name", the rows are reordered so that the row with "Andrews" becomes the first row. When you Shift-click a column header, the rows are sorted in reverse order.

TableSorterDemo after clicking Last Name

The Table API

The tables in this section cover just part of the table API. For more information about the table API, see the API documentation for JTable(in the API reference documentation) and for the various classes and interfaces in the table package(in the API reference documentation). Also see The JComponent Class, which describes the API that JTable inherits from JComponent. The API for using tables falls into the following categories:

Table-Related Classes and Interfaces
Class/Interface Purpose
JTable The component that presents the table to the user.
JTableHeader The component that presents the column names to the user. By default, the table generates this component automatically.
TableModel
AbstractTableModel 		Respectively, the interface that a table model must implement and the usual superclass for table model implementations.
TableCellRenderer
DefaultTableCellRenderer
AbstractTableCellRenderer 		Respectively, the interface that a table cell renderer must implement, the usual implementation used, and the usual superclass for table cell renderer implementations.
TableCellEditor
DefaultCellEditor 		Respectively, the interface that a table cell editor must implement and the usual implementation used.
TableColumnModel
DefaultTableColumnModel 		Respectively, the interface that a table column model must implement and the usual implementation used. You don't usually need to deal with the table column model directly unless you need to get the column selection model, or get a column index or object.
TableColumn Controls all the attributes of a table column, including resizability; minimum, preferred, current, and maximum widths; and an optional column-specific renderer/editor.
DefaultTableModel A Vector-based table model used by JTable when you construct a table specifying no data model and no data.

Creating and Setting Up a Table
JTable Constructor/Method Purpose
JTable(TableModel)
JTable(TableModel, TableColumnModel)
JTable(TableModel, TableColumnModel, ListSelectionModel)
JTable()
JTable(int, int)
JTable(Object[][], Object[])
JTable(Vector, Vector) 		Create a table. The optional TableModel argument specifies the model that provides the data to the table. The optional TableColumnModel and ListSelectionModel arguments let you specify the table column model and the row selection model. As an alternative to specifying a table model, you can supply data and column names, using arrays or vectors. Another option is to specify no data, optionally specifying the number of rows and columns (both integers) to be in the table.
void setPreferredScrollableViewportSize(Dimension) Set the size of the visible part of the table when it's viewed within a scroll pane.
JTableHeader getTableHeader() Get the component that displays the column names.

Manipulating Columns
Constructor/Method Purpose
TableColumnModel getColumnModel()
(in JTable) 		Get the table's column model.
TableColumn getColumn(int)
Enumeration getColumns()
(in TableColumnModel) 		Get one or all of the TableColumn objects for the table.
void setMinWidth(int)
void setPreferredWidth(int)
void setMaxWidth(int)
(in TableColumn) 		Set the minimum, preferred, or maximum width of the column.
int getMinWidth()
int getPreferredWidth()
int getMaxWidth()
int getWidth()
(in TableColumn) 		Get the minimum, preferred, maximum, or current width of the column.

Using Editors and Renderers
Method Purpose
void setDefaultRenderer(Class, TableCellRenderer)
void setDefaultEditor(Class, TableCellEditor)
(in JTable) 		Set the renderer or editor used, by default, for all cells in all columns that return objects of the specified type.
void setCellRenderer(TableCellRenderer)
void setCellEditor(TableCellEditor)
(in TableColumn) 		Set the renderer or editor used for all cells in this column.
TableCellRenderer getHeaderRenderer()
(in TableColumn) 		Get the header renderer for this column.

Version Note:  As of 1.3, this method returns null if the column uses the default renderer. You generally use getDefaultRenderer instead.

TableCellRenderer getDefaultRenderer()
(in JTableHeader) 		Get the header renderer used when none is defined by a table column. Introduced in 1.3.

Implementing Selection
JTable Method Purpose
void setSelectionMode(int) Set the selection intervals allowed in the table. Valid values are defined in ListSelectionModel as SINGLE_SELECTION, SINGLE_INTERVAL_SELECTION, and MULTIPLE_INTERVAL_SELECTION (the default).
void setSelectionModel(ListSelectionModel)
ListSelectionModel getSelectionModel() 		Set or get the model used to control row selections.
void setRowSelectionAllowed(boolean)
void setColumnSelectionAllowed(boolean)
void setCellSelectionEnabled(boolean) 		Set the table's selection orientation. The boolean argument specifies whether that particular type of selection is allowed. By default, row selection is allowed, and column and cell selection are not.

Examples that Use Tables

This table lists examples that use JTable and where those examples are described.

Example Where Described Notes
SimpleTableDemo Creating a Simple Table A basic table with no custom model. Does not include code to specify column widths or detect user editing.
SimpleTable-
SelectionDemo 		Detecting User Selections Adds single selection and selection detection to SimpleTableDemo. By modifying the program's ALLOW_COLUMN_SELECTION and ALLOW_ROW_SELECTION constants, you can experiment with alternatives to the table default of allowing only rows to be selected.
TableDemo Creating a Table Model A basic table with a custom model.
TableEditDemo, WholeNumberField.java(in a .java source file) Validating User-Entered Text Modifies TableDemo to use a custom editor (a text field variant) for all Integer data.
TableRenderDemo Using a Combo Box as an Editor, Further Customizing Table Display and Event Handling Modifies TableDemo to use a custom editor (a combo box) for all data in the Sport column. Also intelligently picks column sizes. Uses renderers to display tool tips for the Sport column (both cells and header).
TableDialogEditDemo, WholeNumberField.java(in a .java source file) Specifying Other Editors Modifies TableEditDemo to have a cell renderer and editor that display a color and let you choose a new one, using a color chooser dialog.
TableSorterDemo Sorting and Otherwise Manipulating Data Sorts column data by interposing a data manipulating table model between the data model and the table. Detects user clicks on column headers.
ListSelectionDemo How to Write a List Selection Listener Shows how to use all list selection modes, using a list selection listener that's shared between a table and list.
SharedModelDemo Nowhere Builds on ListSelectionDemo making the data model be shared between the table and list. If you edit an item in the first column of the table, the new value is reflected in the list.
TreeTable, TreeTable II Creating TreeTables in Swing, Creating TreeTables: Part 2 Examples that combine a tree and table to show detailed information about a hierarchy such as a file system. The tree is a renderer for the table.


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