Swing Hacks

122

|

Chapter 3, Tables and Trees

#24 Create a JDBC Table Model

HACK

H A C K

#24

Create a JDBC Table Model

Hack #24

Bring your database tables into Swing with a minimum of hassle.

If you’ve worked with databases, you’ve probably also worked with the

tools they provide for quick table maintenance and queries: command-line

tools that are well suited to brief hack-and-slash work, but hard to work

with once you start dealing with any serious amount of data. It’s hard

enough to write the SQL command to return 10 or 20 columns in a query—

it’s even worse when the results word-wrap over the course of a dozen lines,

and you can’t tell where one result ends and another begins.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to throw the contents of any database table

into a Swing

JTable? Give it a few JDBC strings, toss it in a JFrame, and

pow!—instant GUI.

Building Connectivity

If you’ve worked with both JDBC and Swing, you’ll grasp the concept in one

sentence: use table metadata to build a Swing

TableModel from the database

table. If you haven’t, here’s the background you’ll need: JDBC provides an

abstract means of accessing databases. Java code to work with one database

should work with another, the only difference is in the way that JDBC

achieves a

Connection to the database, which is usually a matter of provid-

ing

Strings for:

• A driver class, which provides implementations of the various

java.sql

interfaces.

• A URL with which