Possible to highlight a row in text area which in turn would fire an event?

Question

I'm making a GUI of which the main portion consists of a large text area. The text area would list problems that our company is experiencing - each row would represent a problem. Each row would give a problem ID and a description of the problem. I want to make it so that when the user clicks on a row (a problem), another dialog box would open which would present possible solutions to the user regarding the problem at hand. How would I write code to highlight a row which in turn would fire an event opening up another box?
I thought about going about this another way - have a drop down (jcombobox) integrated into each row which the user can choose from but I'm not sure if you can insert a drop down into a text area (and neatly into a row at that!) so I think the former way may be preferable.
Thanks in advance.
Regards,
Paul

Answer 1

If a java application is required (as opposed to a web-based solution using HTML's linking capabilities) the best approach might be a JList implementation. It could go something like this...
import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import javax.swing.event.*;
public class ListFrame extends JFrame
   public ListFrame()
      super("JList example frame");
      getContentPane().add(getListPanel(), BorderLayout.CENTER);
      setDefaultCloseOperation(EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
      pack();
      setVisible(true);
   private Component getListPanel()
      JPanel panel = new JPanel(new BorderLayout());
      final JList list = new JList(new Object[]
         "List option 1...",
         "List option 2...",
         "List option 3..."
      // This will make sure only one item can be checked at a time.
      list.setSelectionMode(ListSelectionModel.SINGLE_SELECTION);
      // Handle the selection here.
      list.addListSelectionListener(new ListSelectionListener()
         public void valueChanged(ListSelectionEvent e)
            // No need to go on if this was a deselection.
            if (e.getValueIsAdjusting() || list.isSelectionEmpty())
               return;
            // This is where you would have to convert the value that's selected into whatever
            // it is you want to display to the user.  This example just puts the text of the
            // selected item into a messagebox.
            Object selectedItem = list.getSelectedValue();
            JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(ListFrame.this, selectedItem);
      list.setVisibleRowCount(5);
      // The scrollpane will control the scrolling of the list (so you can have as many options
      // as you want).  Standard JScrollPane functionalities can be used to control various
      // visual aspects of the list.     
      JScrollPane scroll = new JScrollPane(list);
      scroll.setVerticalScrollBarPolicy(JScrollPane.VERTICAL_SCROLLBAR_ALWAYS);
      panel.add(scroll, BorderLayout.CENTER);
      return panel;
   public static void main(String[] args)
      new ListFrame();
}I know this is quite after-the-fact, but I hope it helps (if you hadn't already solved the problem :) )