How to implement a tiered "selection tree" in Swing? (Or: is there an existing implementation?)

Question

I need a Swing component that will let me display a tree-structured list of items, and allow the user to select or de-select an arbitrary subset of those items, with the ability to select or deselect an entire subtree's worth of components by picking that subtree's parent. (Basically, something similar to the Eclipse "Export JAR file's" dialog (an image of the relevant dialog is here - I basically want the "Select resources to export" component, but for a Swing application.)

I know I can do this by creating a custom TreeCellRenderer, a custom TreeCellEditor, and a custom TreeModel - but that seems like an awful lot of work. Are there any good off-the-shelf implementations that I can use?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Sounds like you are talking about a JTree. It is typically used to display hierarchical data such as a file structure but it can be modified to do other things.

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/components/tree.html

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/javax/swing/JTree.html

Answer 2

I'd consider NetBeans' Outline. Because it descends from JTable, you can specify multiple selections that include subtrees and leaf nodes.

outline.getSelectionModel().setSelectionMode(
    ListSelectionModel.MULTIPLE_INTERVAL_SELECTION);

Addendum: Looking at your picture, you might be able to make use of CheckRenderDataProvider.

Answer 3

You can also take a look at JIDE components to see if they have something like that.