Drop down menu or combo box in jtable

Question

Hi there I nee urgent help I have a jtable and I am collecting information to populate the table dynamically, the problem is I some of the strings that populate certain cells is longer the the width of the cell in a particular column, I thought I could use a combo box and split the strings up so I could have some type of drop down menu showing the information, but when I populate the combo box and instantiate the defaultcell renderer with the combobox it sets all cells in that column with the same information I would like to have it displaying the actual information for every row within that column
or if you can give me any ideas as to how I can avoid this happening or maybe an alternative method of showing these long strings in the table some kind of drop down.
Kind Regards Michael

Answer 1

the problem is I some of the strings that populate certain cells is longer the the width of the cell in a particular column,Set a tooltip to display the entire text of the cell. Here is a simple example;
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import javax.swing.*;
public class TableToolTip extends JFrame
     public TableToolTip()
          Object[][] data = { {"1234567890qwertyuiop", "A"}, {"2", "B"}, {"3", "C"} };
          String[] columnNames = {"Number","Letter"};
          JTable table = new JTable(data, columnNames)
               public String getToolTipText( MouseEvent e )
                    int row = rowAtPoint( e.getPoint() );
                    int column = columnAtPoint( e.getPoint() );
                    Object value = getValueAt(row, column);
                    return value == null ? null : value.toString();
          JScrollPane scrollPane = new JScrollPane( table );
          getContentPane().add( scrollPane );
     public static void main(String[] args)
          TableToolTip frame = new TableToolTip();
          frame.setDefaultCloseOperation( EXIT_ON_CLOSE );
          frame.setSize(150, 100);
          frame.setLocationRelativeTo( null );
          frame.setVisible(true);
}If you want to get fancier than you could set the tooltip text only when the width of the text is greater than the width of the column. Here is an example of this is done with a text field. You would need to modify the code to refer the to table for the text string and the TableColumn for the width.:
JTextField textField = new JTextField(15)
     public String getToolTipText(MouseEvent e)
          FontMetrics fm = getFontMetrics( getFont() );
          String text = getText();
          int textWidth = fm.stringWidth( text );
          return (textWidth > getSize().width ? text : null);
textField.setToolTipText(" ");
I thought I could use a combo box and split the strings up so I could have some type of drop down menu showing the informationIf you want to proceed with this approach then check out this posting:
http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?forumID=57&threadID=637581