ListSelection example

Byron KiourtzoglouNovember 11th, 2012Last Updated: February 20th, 2013

0 67 1 minute read

With this tutorial we shall show you how to perform List Selection activities using JList components and ListSelectionListener interface. List selection is a very useful feature, when you applications requires user input with fixed choices.

In order to use JList and ListSelectionListener, one should perform the following steps:

Create a class that implements ListSelectionListener interface.
Override the methods that correspond to the events you want to monitor about the list e.g valueChanged and customize it to customize the handling of the respective event.
Create a new JList
Use the addListSelectionListener mehtod of the JList class to add to it the ListSelectionListener you’ve created.

Let’s take a look at the code snippet that follows:

package com.javacodegeeks.snippets.desktop;

import javax.swing.JCheckBox;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JList;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.JScrollPane;
import javax.swing.event.ListSelectionEvent;
import javax.swing.event.ListSelectionListener;

public class ListSelectionExample extends JPanel {

    String labelArray[] = {"1", "2", "3"};
    JCheckBox checkBoxArray[] = new JCheckBox[labelArray.length];

    JList listLable = new JList(labelArray);

    public ListSelectionExample() {

  JScrollPane scrollPane = new JScrollPane(listLable);

  add(scrollPane);

  listLable.addListSelectionListener(new SelectionListen());

  for (int i = 0; i < labelArray.length; i++) {

checkBoxArray[i] = new JCheckBox("Option " + i);

add(checkBoxArray[i]);

  }
    }

    public static void main(String args[]) {

  JFrame jFrame = new JFrame("Selection example");

  jFrame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);

  jFrame.setContentPane(new ListSelectionExample());

  jFrame.pack();

  jFrame.setVisible(true);

    }
}
class SelectionListen implements ListSelectionListener {

    @Override
    public void valueChanged(ListSelectionEvent evetn) {

  if ((!evetn.getValueIsAdjusting()) || (evetn.getFirstIndex() == -1)) {

return;

  }

  for (int i = evetn.getFirstIndex(); i <= evetn.getLastIndex(); i++) {

System.out.println(((JList) evetn.getSource()).isSelectedIndex(i));

  }
    }
}

This was an example on how how to perform List Selection activities using JList components and ListSelectionListener interface.