Category search box?

Question

Hi
I'm trying to create a category search similar to NetBeans 6.5 or Safari (Mac OS X) search box, which displays an arrow and magnifying glass on the left for selection of a category (or a field in a table to search on). How is this best done?
Help appreciated,
Lance

Answer 1

OK I found it (you're lucky I have NetBeans available right away!).
As far as the logic of the component goes, you can put two widgets nested in a JPanel, BorderLayout: one JComboBox WEST, and one JTextField, CENTER. I leave you search about the auto-completion (or auto-search) on the JTextField, widely discussed on Java forums.
But I guess I see what appeals you in the, e.g. NetBeans search box rendering, is that it gives the appearance that the drop-down box is actually part of the text field, as there is nor border between the text field and the drop-down box (except a small vertical separator that foes not span the whole height).
It may not be easy to render that, one simple hack could be to override the JTextField.paint() method and clip the Graphics object to a smaller rectangle (that doesn't include the left-hand border of the textfield), then call super.paint() with the clipped Graphics. Same thing goes for the right-hand side of the JComboBox. Easier still, clip both Graphics so that no border appears, and let the containing JPanel have a LineBorder (but it might not look exactly like a JTextFiled border).
Of course you have to set the same background color to the JTF and JCBox, if it's not the case out of the box.