Help! coloring background one row for 3 seconds in JTable with SwingTimer

Question

Hi, I am struggling with this for the past three days but cannot come up with a solution.
I have a JTable and when i insert a new Row, i want to give that row a backgroundcolor for 3 seconds/ or let it blink for 3 seconds and then let it return to its original background color. While the current row is yellow, i want to insert a new row which also would be yellow for 3 seconds. The previous row would return white earlier than the row after, because that row is inserted earlier.
the problem is, that when i add a new row while the current row is yellow, the new row has the timer of the previous row, which means that the last row inserted will stay yellow for a shirter time, which i do not want.
i want a 3 second bgcolor for everyrow inserted. how can i achieve this ?
My code:
startBlinking() is called when a new row is being added to the JTable
public void startBlinking() throws InterruptedException{
if (timer.isRunning()){
timer.setInitialDelay(2);
timer.start();
----------------------- in another class:
//attributes
Action updateCursorAction = getAction();
Timer timer = new Timer(3000, updateCursorAction);
public Action getAction(){
updateCursorAction = new AbstractAction() {
boolean shouldDraw = false;
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
if (shouldDraw =! shouldDraw) {
blinkingYellow();
} else{
blinkingWhite();
timer.stop();
return updateCursorAction;
public void blinkingWhite(){
receiverdata_Table.setRowSelectionInterval(0, 0);
receiverdata_Table.setSelectionBackground(Color.white);
public void blinkingYellow(){
receiverdata_Table.setRowSelectionInterval(0, 0);
receiverdata_Table.setSelectionBackground(Color.YELLOW);
}

Answer 1

Cant resist to point out the ease of doing something like this in Swingx <g>
Basically, the way to go is
- install a Highlighter with the visual property/ies you want to use for the highlighting effect
- update its HighlightPredicate (aka: condition for applying the property) as appropriate
Below is a code snippet (as usual runnable as-is in the context of SwingX test support). The candy is, that the exact same highlighting code is re-usable in JXList, JXTree and (probably, should check) JXComboBox
Enjoy
Jeanette
* Created on 17.12.2010
package org.jdesktop.swingx.renderer;
import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.Component;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Collection;
import java.util.List;
import javax.swing.Timer;
import javax.swing.table.DefaultTableModel;
import org.jdesktop.swingx.InteractiveTestCase;
import org.jdesktop.swingx.JXTable;
import org.jdesktop.swingx.decorator.AbstractHighlighter;
import org.jdesktop.swingx.decorator.ColorHighlighter;
import org.jdesktop.swingx.decorator.ComponentAdapter;
import org.jdesktop.swingx.decorator.HighlightPredicate;
public class DynamicHighlighterExperiments extends InteractiveTestCase {
    public void interactiveHighlightOnInsert() {
        final JXTable table = new JXTable(10, 4);
        final ColorHighlighter hl = new ColorHighlighter(HighlightPredicate.NEVER,
                Color.YELLOW,  null);
        table.addHighlighter(hl);
        final List<Integer> recentRows = new ArrayList<Integer>();
        ActionListener l = new ActionListener() {
            @Override
            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
                int insertedRow = table.getModel().getRowCount();
                recentRows.add(insertedRow);
                ((DefaultTableModel) table.getModel()).addRow(new Object[] {insertedRow});
                table.scrollRowToVisible(table.convertRowIndexToView(insertedRow));
                updateHighlighter(hl, recentRows, insertedRow);
        Timer insertTimer = new Timer(500, l);
        insertTimer.start();
        showWithScrollingInFrame(table, "highlight inserted rows");
    protected void updateHighlighter(final AbstractHighlighter hl,
            final List<Integer> recentRows, final Integer row) {
        hl.setHighlightPredicate(new RowHighlightPredicate(recentRows));
        ActionListener l = new ActionListener() {
            @Override
            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
                recentRows.remove(row);
                hl.setHighlightPredicate(new RowHighlightPredicate(recentRows));
                ((Timer) e.getSource()).stop();
        Timer removeTimer =  new Timer(1500, l);
        removeTimer.setRepeats(false);
        removeTimer.start();
    // PENDING JW: move into swingx zoo of predicates
    public static class RowHighlightPredicate implements HighlightPredicate {
        List<Integer> rows;
        public RowHighlightPredicate(Collection<Integer> row) {
           rows = new ArrayList<Integer>(row);
        @Override
        public boolean isHighlighted(Component renderer,
                ComponentAdapter adapter) {
            int modelRow = adapter.convertRowIndexToModel(adapter.row);
            return rows.contains(modelRow);
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        DynamicHighlighterExperiments test = new DynamicHighlighterExperiments();
        try {
            test.runInteractiveTests();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
}