Creating an Autocomplete Text Field in Java using SwingX

Again, my friend Iswi asked me a simple question, but a little bit hard to do. She asked me, how can she create an autocomplete jtextfield in java, maybe something like NetBean’s autocompletion feature. It took me a while to try several workarounds, before i found a very neat library, swingx. Let just say that this SwingX library helped me alot, and it have lots of other cool swing components. Really worth a try.

In this example, i try to create a simple application consist of 2 autocompletion components, 1 unrestricted jcombobox and 1 restricted jtextfield. Both components will connect to one table using Hibernate. Let’s give it a try.

First, a simple 2 column table.

CREATE DATABASE 'test'
USE 'test'

CREATE TABLE 'contoh' (
  'nama' varchar(30) NOT NULL,
  'alamat' varchar(100) DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY ('nama')
) 

next step is creating a java bean and its hbm.xml for database mapping

package com.edw.bean;

/**
 * Contoh generated by hbm2java
 */
public class Contoh implements java.io.Serializable {

    private String nama;
    private String alamat;

    public Contoh() {
    }

    public Contoh(String nama) {
        this.nama = nama;
    }

    public Contoh(String nama, String alamat) {
        this.nama = nama;
        this.alamat = alamat;
    }

    public String getNama() {
        return this.nama;
    }

    public void setNama(String nama) {
        this.nama = nama;
    }

    public String getAlamat() {
        return this.alamat;
    }

    public void setAlamat(String alamat) {
        this.alamat = alamat;
    }
}

FYI, im using NetBeans’ Hibernate POJO and XML generator.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE hibernate-mapping PUBLIC "-//Hibernate/Hibernate Mapping DTD 3.0//EN" "http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-mapping-3.0.dtd">
<!-- Generated Sep 1, 2010 10:10:38 AM by Hibernate Tools 3.2.1.GA -->
<hibernate-mapping>
  <class catalog="test" name="com.edw.bean.Contoh" table="contoh">
    <id name="nama" type="string">
      <column length="30" name="nama"/>
      <generator class="assigned"/>
    </id>
    <property name="alamat" type="string">
      <column length="100" name="alamat"/>
    </property>
  </class>
</hibernate-mapping>

this is my hibernate.cfg.xml, for my default hibernate configuration

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE hibernate-configuration PUBLIC "-//Hibernate/Hibernate Configuration DTD 3.0//EN" "http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-configuration-3.0.dtd">
<hibernate-configuration>
  <session-factory>
    <property name="hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect</property>
    <property name="hibernate.connection.driver_class">com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</property>
    <property name="hibernate.connection.url">jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/test</property>
    <property name="hibernate.connection.username">admin</property>
    <property name="hibernate.connection.password">xxx</property>
    <mapping resource="com/edw/bean/Contoh.hbm.xml"/>
  </session-factory>
</hibernate-configuration>

and my java class to load hibernate’s main xml configuration

package com.edw.hbm.util;

import org.hibernate.cfg.AnnotationConfiguration;
import org.hibernate.SessionFactory;

/**
 * Hibernate Utility class with a convenient method to get Session Factory object.
 *
 * @author edw
 */
public class HibernateUtil {
    private static final SessionFactory sessionFactory;

    static {
        try {
            // Create the SessionFactory from standard (hibernate.cfg.xml) 
            // config file.
            sessionFactory = new AnnotationConfiguration().configure().buildSessionFactory();
        } catch (Throwable ex) {
            // Log the exception. 
            System.err.println("Initial SessionFactory creation failed." + ex);
            throw new ExceptionInInitializerError(ex);
        }
    }

    public static SessionFactory getSessionFactory() {
        return sessionFactory;
    }
}

this is my main java class, you’ll see some imported SwingX’s classes.

package com.edw.swingx;

import com.edw.bean.Contoh;
import com.edw.hbm.util.HibernateUtil;
import java.awt.Container;
import java.awt.FlowLayout;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.List;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JComboBox;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JTextField;
import org.apache.log4j.Logger;
import org.hibernate.Session;

import org.jdesktop.swingx.autocomplete.AutoCompleteDecorator;
import org.jdesktop.swingx.combobox.ListComboBoxModel;

/**
 *
 * @author edw
 */
public class AutoCompletionTextField extends JFrame implements ActionListener {

    private JButton button = new JButton("tombol");
    private JComboBox comboComplete = new JComboBox();
    private JTextField textComplete = new JTextField(30);
    private Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(this.getClass());
    private List<String> strings = new ArrayList<String>();

    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
        if(e.getSource() == button){
            logger.debug(comboComplete.getSelectedItem().toString());
            logger.debug(textComplete.getText().toString());
        }
    }

    public AutoCompletionTextField() {

        try {
            Session session = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().openSession();
            List<Contoh> contohs = (List<Contoh>)session.createCriteria(Contoh.class).list();
            session.close();

            for (Contoh contoh : contohs) {
                strings.add(contoh.getNama());
            }

            Collections.sort(strings);

            // change true to false to enable string restriction
            comboComplete.setEditable(true);
            comboComplete.setModel(new ListComboBoxModel<String>(strings));

            AutoCompleteDecorator.decorate(comboComplete);
            // change true to false to disable string restriction
            AutoCompleteDecorator.decorate(textComplete, strings, true);

            Container con = getContentPane();
            con.setLayout(new FlowLayout());
            con.add(comboComplete);
            con.add(textComplete);
            con.add(button);

            button.addActionListener(this);
            comboComplete.addActionListener(this);
        } catch (Exception ex) {
            logger.error(ex.getMessage(), ex);
        }
    }
    
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        AutoCompletionTextField autoCompletionTextField = new AutoCompletionTextField();
        autoCompletionTextField.setVisible(true);
        autoCompletionTextField.pack();
        autoCompletionTextField.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
    }
}

this is my UI result,

this is NetBeans 6.9 project structure,

Again, thank you Iswi for your questions. Cheers, (B)