Column Hide in JTable

Question

Hi There,
We are using Jtable to show data using DefaultTableModel. Now we have to implement some hidden columns in this existing JTable.
For this we have tried many ways but not succeeded.
1. We have use width=0 and setting header caption ="" but it shows column with some width insteed of being hidden.
2. further we tried dtm.setColumnCount(numCols) to set required number of columns to be displayed and it does so but ignore the rest columns. So this way is not useful as well.
Please suggest us how to implement hidden columns in JTable ?
Thanx in Adv,

Answer 1

I would strongly recommend that you use JXTable instead from the SwingX project. It even has a simple Popup Column Control that helps you hide and show columns as desired. But here is some simple code that might be useful
import java.awt.Point;
import java.awt.Rectangle;
import java.awt.event.MouseAdapter;
import java.awt.event.MouseEvent;
import java.util.Enumeration;
import java.util.Vector;
import javax.swing.JTable;
import javax.swing.table.DefaultTableColumnModel;
import javax.swing.table.DefaultTableModel;
import javax.swing.table.JTableHeader;
import javax.swing.table.TableCellRenderer;
import javax.swing.table.TableColumn;
import javax.swing.table.TableModel;
public class TableUtilities {
     * Restores a hidden TableColumn based on the supplied column index and sets to column
     * width to the supplied preferredWidth
     * @param table
     * @param modelIndex
     * @param columnWidth
    public static void restoreColumn(JTable table, int modelIndex, int columnWidth) {
        if (table.getColumnCount() <= 0) {
            return;
        TableColumn column = new TableColumn(modelIndex);
        column.setHeaderValue(table.getModel().getColumnName(modelIndex));
        column.setCellRenderer(table.getCellRenderer(0, modelIndex));
        column.setCellEditor(table.getCellEditor(0, modelIndex));
        column.setPreferredWidth(columnWidth);
        DefaultTableColumnModel model = (DefaultTableColumnModel) table.getColumnModel();
        model.addColumn(column);
        model.moveColumn(model.getColumnCount() - 1, modelIndex);
     * Restores a hidden TableColumn based on the supplied column index.
     * @param table
     * @param modelIndex
    public static void restoreColumn(JTable table, int modelIndex) {
        TableColumn column = new TableColumn(modelIndex);
        column.setHeaderValue(table.getModel().getColumnName(modelIndex));
        column.setCellRenderer(table.getCellRenderer(0, modelIndex));
        column.setCellEditor(table.getCellEditor(0, modelIndex));
        column.setPreferredWidth(120);
        DefaultTableColumnModel model = (DefaultTableColumnModel) table.getColumnModel();
        model.addColumn(column);
        model.moveColumn(model.getColumnCount() - 1, modelIndex);
     * Restores a hidden TableColumn based on the supplied column name.
     * @param table
     * @param column
    public static void restoreColumn(JTable table, String column) {
        restoreColumn(table, getColumnIndex(table.getModel(), column));
     * Restores a hidden TableColumn based on the supplied column name and sets to column
     * width to the supplied preferredWidth
     * @param table
     * @param columnWidth
     * @param column
    public static void restoreColumn(JTable table, String column, int columnWidth) {
        restoreColumn(table, getColumnIndex(table.getModel(), column), columnWidth);
     * Carries out the process to hide a table column from the view based on the supplied
     * column name
     * @param table
     * @param column
    public static void hideColumn(JTable table, String column) {
        hideColumn(table, table.convertColumnIndexToView(getColumnIndex(table.getModel(), column)));
     * Carries out the process to hide a table column from the view based on the supplied
     * column index
     * @param table
     * @param column
    public static void hideColumn(JTable table, int column) {
        DefaultTableColumnModel model = (DefaultTableColumnModel) table.getColumnModel();
        if (model.getColumnCount() != 0 && column != -1) {
            model.removeColumn(model.getColumn(column));
     * Returns a Vector of Strings containing the columnNames of for the specified TableModel
     * @param model
     * @return
    public static Vector<String> getColumnNames(TableModel model) {
        Vector<String> colNames = new Vector<String>();
        for (int i = 0; i < model.getColumnCount(); i++) {
            colNames.add(model.getColumnName(i));
        return colNames;
     * Returns the first index of the column with the specified name in the supplied TableModel.
     * @param model
     * @param name
     * @return
    public static int getColumnIndex(TableModel model, String name) {
        for (int i = 0; i < model.getColumnCount(); i++) {
            if (model.getColumnName(i).equalsIgnoreCase(name)) {
                return i;
        return -1;
}ICE
Edited by: fadugyamfi on Aug 17, 2009 11:05 AM