Java: Why doesn't JTable use TableCellEditor?

Question

The intention of MyTableCellEditor is to make a JTable cell behave like an Excel cell, IOW, entering a value after single clicking in a cell overwrites rather than appends to the existing value. I didn't expect the following code to work on the first pass, but I did expect to be hit debug breakpoints in getTableCellEditorComponent and getCellEditorValue. Why isn't getTableCellEditorComponent or getCellEditorValue called when I use jTable?

public class MyTable extends javax.swing.JFrame implements TableModelListener {
    private static final MyTableCellEditor tableCellEditor =
        new MyTableCellEditor();
        ...
    public MyTable() {
        initComponents();
        jTable.getModel().addTableModelListener(MyTable.this);
        ...
    private void initComponents() { // Generated by the Form Editor.
        jTable = new javax.swing.JTable();
        jTable.setCellEditor(tableCellEditor);
        ...
public class MyTableCellEditor extends AbstractCellEditor implements
        TableCellEditor {
    JComponent component = new JTextField();
    public Component getTableCellEditorComponent(JTable table, Object value,
            boolean isSelected, int rowIndex, int vColIndex) {
        if (isSelected) {
            ((JTextField)component).selectAll();
        }
        ((JTextField)component).setText((String)value);
        return component;
    }
    public Object getCellEditorValue() {
        return ((JTextField)component).getText();
    }
}

Answer 1

setCellEditor(TableCellEditor) sets the editor for the currently active cell only (and will be lost once it's no longer active. You want to call JTable.setDefaultEditor() to set the default editor for a specific class.

jTable.setDefaultEditor(String.class, tableCellEditor);

Alternatively, you can set an editor for the column through the TableColumnModel, eg

jTable.getColumnModel().getColumn(1).setCellEditor(tableCellEditor);