Handling large number of Swing components

Question

I'm doing a favor for an engineer friend by making him a program that helps him with the scheduling of his factory's production. Each type of product is broken down to a set of steps (they share a lot of them, but there are a few differences).

The programming issue:

Each time a new production process is registered I display a number of checkboxes representing the before mentioned steps. He can choose which steps he needs added for this particular product. If he checks a checkbox, two (or more) textfields appear where he can add additional information (starting date, duration, comments, etc...). My problem is that this is a lot of individual components and I am unsure how to handle them. Since I will need to have access to all of them at some point (the checkboxes to see if that step is needed and all the textfields for the data) I was thinking of having them all as fields, but that doesn't feel right...

Another approach could be to make a container class that groups the textfields together with the checkbox. Something like this:

ArrayList<MyComponentGroup> group;
for (MyComponentGroup cg : group) {
    if (cg.getCheckBox().isSelected()) {
        //access and read the data from all the textfields in this object
    }
}

What is the Java programming convention or the most commonly used method to handle this situation?

Answer 1

One approach is to consistently give each JComponent a unique name. Use something hierarchical to fit the complex process, like "Whites.Rinsecycle.enableCB". For completeness, store this String as a clientProperty in the JComponent. Then you can use that as a key in a large Map to access all the components.

Maybe not the most "elegant" (I'd tend to go with a hierarchy of JPanels with relevant fields) but for a slightly quick and dirty, moderate sized project this is reasonable.

Answer 2

Here's what I would do when dealing with tons of components and similar requirements:

• I would model the relationship between options (available through checkbox selections) and the related data to fill (requirements). This model may already be available for you.
• I would attempt to use PropertyEditor instances and map them to model elements.
• When the time comes to save or use the data filled by the user, I would just walk the model represented on the screen, grab the associated editors and deal with the value of those editors.

I think that the approach that I described above will give you less work and potentially and it will bring more flexibility for your friend.

You'd only pay the initial cost of getting the components relationships/dependencies in a nice model as well as registering the relevant PropertyEditors for visual editing.