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Language: Java
Expertise: Intermediate

Feb 24, 2000

The JComboBox API provides a programmer with very little direct control over how list items are displayed. This is because, in true object-oriented fashion, a JComboBox object knows or cares very little about the items it displays to the user. It only knows that it displays Components, which it gets from its ListCellRenderer's getListCellRendererComponent() method.

Unless a JComboBox is using a custom renderer, it will be using an instance of the javax.swing.plaf.basic.BasicComboBoxRenderer, which is a subclass of JLabel. Armed with this knowledge, a programmer can easily modify the appearance of the list items through methods provided by the JLabel class. Try these lines of code on a JComboBox object named comboBox:

 
ListCellRenderer r = comboBox.getRenderer();
((JLabel) r).setHorizontalAlignment(SwingConstants.CENTER);
((JLabel) r).setBorder(new BevelBorder(BevelBorder.LOWERED));
((JLabel)
r).setIcon
(javax.swing.plaf.metal.MetalIconFactory.getFileChooserNewFolderIcon
());

Even more interesting results can be obtained by writing a custom class which implements the javax.swing.ListCellRenderer interface and passing an instance of it to JComboBox's setRenderer() method.