Data-driven GUI construction at runtime

Question

I am designing a patient simulation program for a veterinary college. I need to have a GUI that is built at runtime from data tables for each patient. One patient may have 3 pages of laboratory data and would need three tabbed panes while another may have six pages and need six panes. In addition, the laboratory test data contained on each pane will vary in test numbers and test types from patient to patient, and must be loaded and displayed at runtime as well. I am assuming there is a design pattern for this type of problem. Could someone direct me to any books, resources, (commercial or otherwise) that I can use to background myself? Thank you in advance. Rick

Answer 1

This can be done using a model that has a collection of data. You basically loop through all the elements in that collection and create textfields, etc, for each item.
You want to organize the builder methods so they are composed, like first you create a tab for each page of data, then in each tab, you create a box for each medical condition, and then in each box you create a text field, etc. So it's basically just a bunch of nested loops.
The layout can get kind of tricky, there are a couple ways to do it. You can nest boxes (BoxLayout), or use GridBagConstraints, and keep a public grid height, so whenever something is added it is positioned next in order.
so you do things like gc = new GridBagConstraints();
gc.anchor = GridBagConstraints.NORTHWEST;
gc.gridx = 0;
gc.gridy = y++; // gloabl height position
add(textField, gc);