About creating tables.

Question

In an application I have to create simple tables, and I found class JTable from swing. However it is a JComponent while I would need an Image, BufferedImage, or ImageIcon object for representing the table to write it to an HTML file or export it as a graphics file. Is there a way I can create an ImageIcon through JTable, or any other? I tried the Component method createImage(width, height) but it always returns null. Could someone help me please?

Answer 1

Are you asking how to take a 'screenshot' of a component (in this instance a JTable)?
If that is the case the following code may be of use:
// create an image with the correct size
BufferedImage image = new BufferedImage(table.getWidth(),table.getHeight(),BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);
// get the graphics on which to paint.
Graphics g = image.getGraphics();
// The component you are taking an image of will be put here
// so you will need to re-add it back to your container...
JPanel p = new JPanel();
// this actually does the work of taking the shot.
SwingUtilities.paintComponent(g,table,p,0,0,image.getWidth(),image.getHeight());
try {
     // save the image to a file.
     ImageIO.write(image,"JPG",new File("c:\\testing.jpg"));
} catch (IOException e) {
     e.printStackTrace(); 
}This code works in Java 1.4.
-- Nate