How to give some color to a Node in a JTree

Question

Hi there,
I have built a JTree that is now ALMOST ready to be the way I want... but ONE thing is missing : I want to be able to put some color on the leaves of my tree, well on the String objects that are just right to their icons. I searched almost all day! Why is it so hard to find some function to accomplish this task when this task is a common one.
Well please if anyone knows how to do that in a simple way please write back.
Mr. Big

Answer 1

It's actually quite easy.
What you have to do is write a custom tree cell renderer which extends DefaultTreeCellRenderer. In that class, your getTreeCellRenderer() method should do something like the following:
public Component getTreeCellRendererComponent(
    JTree tree, Object value, boolean selected,
    boolean expanded, boolean leaf, int row, boolean hasFocus )
        Component treeCellRenderer =
              super.getTreeCellRendererComponent(tree, value, selected, expanded, leaf, row, hasFocus);
        if (selected) {
            setForeground(Color.WHITE);
            setBackground(BACKGROUND_SELECTION_COLOR);
        } else {
            treeCellRenderer.setForeground(Color.RED);
        return treeCellRenderer;
Then you'll need to make sure that you call myTree.setCellRenderer(new CustomTreeCellRenderer());
cheers,
Greg