Dynamic JTree; updating the Jtree during app execution

Question

I have a JTree that renders a DOM Tree. All is well. I can set different icons in the tree depending on the type of node. The functionality I need is to dynamically change the icon in the JTree for a given node. I have a wrapper object that extends DefaultMutableTreeNode and contains an Icon member varrialbe. The problem is that this varriable is initialized by a custom TreeCellRenderer depending on the contents of the node.
I have also tried having a node_status flag inside my wrapper node, to give the Cell Renderer something to check to determine what to make the icon. The problem, I think, is that the JTree gets rerendered everytime an AWT event is fired; rerendering the JTree causes my wrapper nodes to be reinstanticated thus clearing all information in the Node, including the node_status flag.
Has anyone done anything similar, or does anyone have any insight into what is going on?
thanks.
-karl

Answer 1

I have figured out my problem and am posting it in the hopes that it helps others.
I created a custom TreeModel to deal with taking an XML (DOM) Tree and rendering it in a JTree. The problem comes from the custom class that I created to wrap the DOM nodes. The geometry for the DOM tree is contained in the DOM Node (getChild(x), an XML Tree is really just a single node with children, etc) and the problem stems from the wrapper object not knowing about the geometry of the tree except by traversing the tree through the DOM Nodes; since the DOM Node is a member of the wrapper node, traversal through the DOM tree breaks any data stored in the wrapper node which is reinitialized whenever you try to get a node's child.
Solution:
Do not render the tree recursivly with the DOM Nodes: render the tree itteratively with wrapper nodes. Because of the frequency the JTree gets redrawn, and thus the TreeModel gets hit with events, maintaining a semi-static tree will keep the information in the nodes.
-Karl