Java Behavior - JTable and TableCellRenderer

Question

I have a custom JTable (15 rows by 20 cols) that was created to work for all JComponents. I'm currently using it for a mixture of JComboBoxes, JTextFields, and JButtons. Oh, and I'm using Java5 (a requirement).

I have two questions:

1) The first regards the TableCellRenderer class, and its single method:

public Component getTableCellRendererComponent(final JTable table,
                                                   final Object value,
                                                   final boolean isSelected,
                                                   final boolean hasFocus,
                                                   final int row,
                                                   final int column) {...}

All it does is cast the Object value argument to a JComponent, and potentially change the background color. No big deal. The question I have is why is this method is called sooooo often. When selecting a single cell, it is called 23 times. When Alt-Tabbing between two UNRELATED applications (I use Win7), this method is called over 200 times (and only for JButtons and JTextFields)! Is this in any way necessary, and if not, how can I put a stop to unnecessary rendering calls?

2) The second question regards the JTable itself. When I'm editing a cell (cursor in a JTextField and blinking) and I click on another cell, that cell is only selected. If I then click on another cell, however, I start editing that cell. All I can think is that from the initial editing component, I'm selecting the JTable, and then selecting the component within. Is there any way to change this? Either going one way (always selects the jtable on first click) or the other (always enters cell on first click). I would prefer the first option, if possible.

Thansk to anyone who can grant some insight/help!

Answer 1

1) Why are you storing Components in the TableModel? That is not efficient. You should be storing data in the TableModel. JTable was designed to render data using a single component. The default renderer is generally a JLabel. Then when you edit a cell a different component is used.

When you click on a cell you may need to re-render the previous row (to remove the row selection) and then render the current row with the selection. So the renderer is called for each visible cell that is affected. Tabbing to the application probably causes all the visible cells to be re-rendererd.

2) Hard to answer since this is not the default behavour. You must also be using custom editors and I don't know what your custom code looks like. The default editor has a setClickCountToStart() method which defaults to 2. Maybe you set this to 1.

Change your solution to use data (not Components) in the TableModel and post your SSCCE if you have further questions.