How to disable selection of root node in JTree

Question

Hi all! Thanks for taking a minute to read my post!
I am writing a really basic JTree for showing a list of items.
Here is some of the code:
/** Create a basic tree **/
DefaultMutableTreeNode rootNode = new DefaultMutableTreeNode("Title");
DefaultTreeModel treeModel = new DefaultTreeModel(rootNode);
JTree tree = new JTree(treeModel);
/** Method to return the string of the current highlighted selection **/
public String getSelectionString()
DefaultMutableTreeNode node =
tree.getSelectionPath().getLastPathComponent();
return (String)node.getUserObject();
I would like to disable selection of the root node of my JTree.
Thus, if I make a call to getSelectionString() above, it would return null instead of the string that represents the root label.
I have read the following forum on disabling various TreePaths and TreeNodes in a JTree:
http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jsp?forum=57&thread=224691
This forum suggests implementing the TreeSelectionListener interface and the TreeSelectionModel class and over-riding the addSelectedPath() methods. I tried this suggestion, and I was able to enable and disable the different children of the Jtree, but the root of the JTree would not disable.
I suppose that I could just simply remove the visibility of the root node, but I really want to avoid that option if possible.
Wait --- let me be clear ---- I want to disable the selection of the root node only - still allowing selection of all its children.
Any suggestions?
Am I missing something really simple here?
Did I explain my problem clearly?
Thanks in advance!
jewels

Answer 1

simply try this..
in the
public void valueChanged(javax.swing.event.TreeSelectionEvent event);
method of TreeSelectionListener impelentation get the
TreePath tp = event.getPath();
from TreePath get the component and then remove the selection from the treePath if it is the node u were checking/root node in this case
tree.getSelectionModel().removeSelectionPath(tp);
Try out....