Java Foundation Classes in a Nutshell

JTable and TableModel

javax.swing.JTable is another powerful Swing component for displaying com-

plex data structures. Like

JTree, JTable relies on a separate model object to hold

and repr esent the data it displays and has its own package of helper classes,

javax.swing.table. This package contains the TableModel inter face and its default

implementations,

AbstractTableModel and DefaultTableModel.

If your table data is tidily organized, it is easy to use

JTable without worrying

about the

TableModel.Ifyour data is an array of rows, where each row is an array

of objects, you can just pass this

Object[][] dir ectly to the JTable constructor. If

you want, you can also specify an optional array of column names. This is all you

need to do: the

JTable does the rest. This technique also works if your data is

stor ed in a

Vector of rows, where each row is itself a Vector.

Often, however, your data is not as regular as that. When you want to display a

tabular view of data that is not, by nature, tabular, you must implement the

Table-

Model inter face (or, mor e likely, subclass the AbstractTableModel class). The job

of this

TableModel implementation is to serve as the interface between your data,

which is not neatly organized into a table, and the

JTable object, which wants to

display a table. In other words, your

TableModel pr esents a neat tabular view of

your data, regardless of how the data is organized underneath. ...