Lists and List Boxes

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Swinging Duke

A JList object is a user-interface component that presents a list of items. From this list, the user can select one or more items. In the Swing 0.5 release, the component called JListBox has been renamed JList, and no longer includes scrolling support. To make a scrolling list, write code something like the following:

JList list = new JList(new Object[]{"one", "two", "free", "four"});
JScrollPane listbox = new JScrollPane(list);

The JList control class provides basic support for presenting a list of single-line strings. It supports both single selections and multiple selections, along with the usual list of operations for adding and removing string items from lists.

JList shares the following features with other kinds of list and list-box controls:

Generic display: JList uses the ListCellRenderer interface to display any kind of object for both the selected value and the list of possible values.
ListSelectionModel: JList implements the ListSelectionModel interface.
List Selection events: JList uses the ListSelectionEvent class to report when a list item is selected. A ListSelection event is an event that is fired by a change in the current selection. This change is limited to a row interval. When a ListSelectionEvent is detected, a ListSelectionListener generally queries the source of the event to retrieve the new selected status of each potentially changed row. For more details, see the ListSelectionEvent, ListSelectionListener, and ListSelectionModel APIs.

With the help of the ListCellRenderer interface, your application can cause the items in a list box to be rendered in various user-selectable forms. The most common kinds of renderings displayed in list boxes are strings and icons. A list box can display both strings and icons. To see how strings and icons can be used in list boxes, run the SwingSet demonstration program provided with Swing and experiment with the lists provided on the page that demonstrates list boxes.

For more information about the JList class, see the JList API.