Prevent JTable from Auto-Sorting on Double Click

Question

I have a JTable that has sortable columns using a custom RowSorter. I assume the RowSorter class automatically adds itself as a MouseListener to the table's ColumnHeader, because it automatically performs the sort without my having added any custom mouse listening code. This works perfectly.

I also added some code (based off of this example) that allows the user to resize the table columns by double-clicking on the space between them in the column header (mimicking that behavior of Excel). The issue is that when a user double-clicks the header to resize a column, it also sorts that column. I want to only have the columns sort if the header is single-clicked.

My first approach was to use Java interface Proxy's to replace all of the existing MouseListeners of the JTable, intercept the events, and only pass on events related to single clicks. This seems like overkill, though. Is there a better way?

Answer 1

My first approach was to use Java interface Proxy's to replace all of the existing MouseListeners of the JTable, intercept the events, and only pass on events related to single clicks.

That is basically how this works:

import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import javax.swing.table.*;

public class ResizeColumnListener implements MouseListener
{
    private static Cursor resizeCursor = Cursor.getPredefinedCursor(Cursor.E_RESIZE_CURSOR);

    private MouseListener uiListener;
    private JTableHeader header;
    private TableColumnAdjuster tca;

    public ResizeColumnListener(JTable table)
    {
        header = table.getTableHeader();
        tca = new TableColumnAdjuster( table );

        MouseListener[] listeners = header.getMouseListeners();

        for (MouseListener ml: listeners)
        {
            String className = ml.getClass().toString();

            if (className.contains("BasicTableHeaderUI"))
            {
                uiListener = ml;
                header.removeMouseListener(ml);
                header.addMouseListener( this );
            }
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void mouseClicked( MouseEvent e )
    {
        if (header.getCursor() != resizeCursor)
        {
            uiListener.mouseClicked( e );
            return;
        }

        //  Handle the double click event to resize the column
        //  Note: The last 3 pixels + 3 pixels of next column are for resizing,
        //  so we need to adjust the mouse point to get the actual column.

        if (e.getClickCount() == 2)
        {
            Point p = e.getPoint();
            p.x -= 3;
            int column = header.columnAtPoint( p );
            tca.adjustColumn( column );

            //  Generate event to reset the cursor

            header.dispatchEvent(new MouseEvent(
                header,
                MouseEvent.MOUSE_MOVED,
                e.getWhen(),
                e.getModifiers(),
                e.getX(),
                e.getY(),
                0,
                false));
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void mouseEntered( MouseEvent e )
    {
        uiListener.mouseEntered( e );
    }

    @Override
    public void mouseExited( MouseEvent e )
    {
        uiListener.mouseExited( e );
    }

    @Override
    public void mousePressed( MouseEvent e )
    {
        uiListener.mousePressed( e );
    }

    @Override
    public void mouseReleased( MouseEvent e )
    {
        uiListener.mouseReleased( e );
    }

    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        try
        {
//          UIManager.setLookAndFeel(UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName());
        }
        catch (Exception e) { }

        DefaultTableModel model = new DefaultTableModel(5, 5);
        model.setValueAt("Row 0 : Column 0", 0, 0);
        model.setValueAt("Row 1 : Column 1", 1, 1);
        model.setValueAt("Row 2 : Column 2", 2, 2);
        model.setValueAt("Row 3 : Column 3", 3, 3);
        model.setValueAt("Row 4 : Column 4", 4, 4);

        JTable table = new JTable( model );
        table.setAutoResizeMode(JTable.AUTO_RESIZE_OFF);
        table.setAutoCreateRowSorter(true);
        JScrollPane scrollPane = new JScrollPane( table );

        new ResizeColumnListener(table);

        JFrame frame = new JFrame();
        frame.setDefaultCloseOperation( JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE );
        frame.add( scrollPane );
        frame.setSize(400, 200);
        frame.setVisible(true);
    }
}

This code also uses the Table Column Adjuster.