Customize "Tab" key for JTextArea to focus next component.

Question

Hi,
I am trying to change the "TAB" key behaviour for JTextArea, by using CustomAction configured via InputMap() and ActionMap(). When the user presses the Tab key, the focus should go the next component instead of tabbing in the same JTextArea component. Here is the code for the CustomAction().
    public static class CustomTabAction extends AbstractAction {
        private JComponent comp;
        public CustomTabAction (JComponent comp) {
            this.comp = comp;
            this.comp.getInputMap().put(KeyStroke.getKeyStroke("TAB"), "TABPressed");
            this.comp.getActionMap().put("TABPressed", this);
        public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
            Object source = evt.getSource();
            if (source instanceof Component) {
                FocusManager.getCurrentKeyboardFocusManager().
                        focusNextComponent((Component) source);
    }This works for most of the cases in my applicaiton. The problem is that it doesn't work with JTable which has a custom cell editor (JTextArea). In JTextArea field of JTable, if the Tab is pressed, nothing happens and the cursor remains in the custom JTextArea exactly at the same place, without even tabbing spaces. Here is the CustomCellEditor code.
    public class DescColCellEditor extends AbstractCellEditor implements TableCellEditor {
//prepare the component.
        JComponent comp = new JTextArea();
        public Component getTableCellEditorComponent(JTable table, Object value,
                boolean isSelected, int rowIndex, int vColIndex) {
            // Configure Tab key to focus to next component
            CustomActions.setCustomAction("CustomTabAction", comp);
            // Configure the component with the specified value
            ((JTextArea)comp).setText((String)value);
            // Return the configured component
            return comp;
        // This method is called when editing is completed.
        // It must return the new value to be stored in the cell.
        public Object getCellEditorValue() {
            return ((JTextArea)comp).getText();
    }regards,
nirvan

Answer 1

>
textArea.getInputMap().remove(....);but that won't work because the binding is actually defined in the parent InputMap. So I think you need to use code like:
textArea.getInputMap().getParent().remove(...);But I'm not sure about this as I've never tried it.I tried removing the VK_TAB key from both the input map and parent input map as shown below. But I still have to press "TAB" twice in order to get out of the JTextArea column in JTable.
            comp.getInputMap().getParent().remove(
                        KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(KeyEvent.VK_TAB,0));
            comp.getInputMap().remove(
                        KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(KeyEvent.VK_TAB,0));after coding this, I am using the setFocusTraversalKeys for adding only "TAB" key as ForwardTraversalKey as given below.
        Set newForwardKeys = new HashSet();
        newForwardKeys.add(KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(KeyEvent.VK_TAB, 0));
        comp.setFocusTraversalKeys(
                    KeyboardFocusManager.FORWARD_TRAVERSAL_KEYS,newForwardKeys);
        Set newBackwardKeys = new HashSet();
        newBackwardKeys.add(KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(KeyEvent.VK_TAB, KeyEvent.SHIFT_DOWN_MASK));
        comp.setFocusTraversalKeys(
                    KeyboardFocusManager.BACKWARD_TRAVERSAL_KEYS,newBackwardKeys);The only problem that remains now is that I have to press the "TAB" twice in order to get out of the JTextArea column
regards,
nirvan.