How to ... / FAQs

 
  • How to create a table filter

    The tutorial section describes the usage of the TableFilterHeader class, that defines the filter header associated to tables.

    As summary: create first the JTable, that should be included in a JScrollPane, as it is usual. Then, just create the TableFilterHeader with the table as single parameter -other constructors can be invoked to modify the default behaviour-. 

    JTable table = new JTable();
/* ... JScrollPane scrollPane = new JScrollPane(table);   ...*/
TableFilterHeader filter = new TableFilterHeader(table);

    This code is enough to start using the table filter. Check then its javadoc to customize it, or check the examples, whose code is available in the download section - use the source distribution file-

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  • Listening for sorting events

    Listening for sorting events require adding a listener to the table itself. For example, it is possible to add a tooltip that shows the current number of rows -or how many have been filtered out-: 

    header.getTable().getRowSorter().addRowSorterListener(new RowSorterListener() {
            @Override
            public void sorterChanged(RowSorterEvent e) {
                System.out.println(e.getPreviousRowCount());
            }
         });
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  • Create additional user filters

    It is easy to define additional filters outside the header filter, subclassing from the Filter class, for example: 

        
final Filter userFilter = new Filter(){
	@Override
	public boolean include(Entry entry) {
		return -1!=entry.getStringValue(nameColumn).indexOf('e');
	}
};
filterHeader.addFilter(userFilter);
JCheckBox check = new JCheckBox("Filter out any row where the "+
                                "name does not contain a lower case 'e'");		
check.addItemListener(new ItemListener() {			
	@Override
	public void itemStateChanged(ItemEvent e) {				
		userFilter.setEnabled(e.getStateChange()==ItemEvent.SELECTED);
	}
});
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  • Remove the table filter header

    If the filter header has been including in the GUI automatically -as it happens when is associated to a table, and the Position is INLINE or TOP-, to remove the filter header from the GUI it is enough to invoke again setTable, passing a null parameter: 

    filterHeader.setTable(null);

    If the filter header has been included manually in the GUI -using the NONE position-, in addition to the previous call is obviously needed to manually exclude the header from the GUI.

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  • Hide the usage of default wildcards on the filter editors

    The default parser model allows the user to enter text such as molly to display all rows that contain the given text. It is equivalent to entering *molly*, and the filter will show this equivalent representation.

    This can be avoided by using a provided alternate parser model:

    FilterSettings.parserModelClass = net.coderazzi.filters.gui.LooseParserModel.class;

    This alternate parser does not display the wildcards, which is an initial advantage. However, it can produce unexpected results in specific cases. For example, in a column with integers, entering as filter the expression 2 would list all entries that contain that digit and not only the entries with the exact value 2. The default parser would correctly display as filter *2*

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