Preventing the selection of next cell in JTable while using AutoComplete

Question

Hi,

I am using GlazedList's autoComplete support in a JTable using the below code

itemColumn.setCellEditor(AutoCompleteSupport.createTableCellEditor(itemList));

How do I prevent the selection or editing the next cell, if the user hasn't selected any value in the CellEditor.

Answer 1

That type of functionality is built right into the editor and you would need to override the stopCellEditing(...) method to prevent the editor from losing focus. Something like:

import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import javax.swing.text.*;
import javax.swing.event.*;
import javax.swing.border.*;
import javax.swing.table.*;

public class TableEdit extends JFrame
{
    TableEdit()
    {
     JTable table = new JTable(5,5);
     table.setPreferredScrollableViewportSize(table.getPreferredSize());

     JScrollPane scrollpane = new JScrollPane(table);
     getContentPane().add(scrollpane);

     //  Use a custom editor

     TableCellEditor fce = new FiveCharacterEditor();
     table.setDefaultEditor(Object.class, fce);
    }

    class FiveCharacterEditor extends DefaultCellEditor
    {
     FiveCharacterEditor()
     {
      super( new JTextField() );
     }

     public boolean stopCellEditing()
     {
      try
      {
       String editingValue = (String)getCellEditorValue();

       if(editingValue.length() != 5)
       {
        JTextField textField = (JTextField)getComponent();
        textField.setBorder(new LineBorder(Color.red));
        textField.selectAll();
        textField.requestFocusInWindow();

        JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(
         null,
         "Please enter string with 5 letters.",
         "Alert!",JOptionPane.ERROR_MESSAGE);
        return false;
       }
      }
      catch(ClassCastException exception)
      {
       return false;
      }

      return super.stopCellEditing();
     }

     public Component getTableCellEditorComponent(
      JTable table, Object value, boolean isSelected, int row, int column)
     {
      Component c = super.getTableCellEditorComponent(
       table, value, isSelected, row, column);
      ((JComponent)c).setBorder(new LineBorder(Color.black));

      return c;
     }

    }

    public static void main(String [] args)
    {
     JFrame frame = new TableEdit();
     frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
     frame.pack();
     frame.setLocationRelativeTo( null );
     frame.setVisible(true);
    }
}