Strange behavior of JTable with TableCellRender.

Question

Hi, all!
i am creating a graphic application using Swing. i wanna use a single column table to display list of pictures.
JScrollPane tablePane = new JScrollPane();
TableValues tv = new TableValues(TableValues.TYPE_FRAME);
JTable picTable = new JTable(tv);
picTable.setCellSelectionEnabled(true);
TableColumnModel tcm = picTable.getColumnModel();
TableColumn tc = tcm.getColumn(0);
tc.setCellRenderer(new PicRender());
tablePane.setViewportView(picTable);
this.getContentPane().add(tablePane);
When i run the code, the JTable seems refreshing the cells at all the time! (And i did not click anything or move the cursor above the table).
and CPU time runs as high as 99%!
Please help. Thank you in advance.
the following is my TableCellRender:
public class PicRender extends JLabel implements TableCellRenderer {
static Border selectedBorder = BorderFactory.createBevelBorder(BevelBorder.RAISED, Color.magenta, Color.magenta);
static Border unselectedBorder = BorderFactory.createEmptyBorder();
static int counter = 0;
public PicRender() {
super();
System.out.println("Creating label");
public Component getTableCellRendererComponent(JTable table, Object value, boolean isSelected, boolean hasFocus, int row, int col) {
try {
TableValues tv = (TableValues) table.getModel();
BufferedImage image = tv.getPic(row);
int imageHeight = image.getHeight();
int imageWidth = image.getWidth();
Icon icon = new ImageIcon(image);
//setIcon(icon);
setText("#" + row);
setToolTipText(tv.getToolTip(row));
table.setRowHeight(row, imageHeight + 10);
setHorizontalAlignment(SwingConstants.CENTER);
if(isSelected) {
setBorder(selectedBorder);
}else{
setBorder(unselectedBorder);
catch (Exception ex) {
setIcon(null);
setText("Thumbnails N/A");
System.out.println("Paint: " + row + "\t" + (++counter));
return this;
* The following methods copied from Sun's DefaultTableCellRender.java.
* Overridden for performance reasons.
public void validate() {}
public void revalidate() {}
public void repaint(long tm, int x, int y, int width, int height) {}
public void repaint(Rectangle r) {}
protected void firePropertyChange(String propertyName, Object oldValue,
Object newValue) {
// Strings get interned...
if (propertyName == "text") {
// super.firePropertyChange(propertyName, oldValue, newValue);
public void firePropertyChange(String propertyName, boolean oldValue,
boolean newValue) {}

Answer 1

It is probably related to the fact that you are setting the tables row height in the renderer this will fire a render message when the height changes. One height is applied to all rows of a table. This means that is you have images of different heights you are continually changing the tables row height and therefore continually rendereing.
My approach would be to have all the images fit into a set size ( say 64*64 ( with scaling if neccesary ) you could then have a popup show the full size image if required.