JPopup key bindings only work 1 time

Question

I have a static JPopupMenu which I create and assign keybindings to using:

JMenuItem mItem = new MenuItem( "name" );
mItem.setAccelerator( KeyStroke.getKeyStroke( KeyEvent.VK_W, ActionEvent.CTRL_MASK ) );

This JPopupMenu is added to a JTable by doing the following:

JTable table = new JTable();
table.add( popupMenu );

I also add a MouseListener to the JTable as well to trigger the popup menu:

table.addMouseListener( mListener );

I override mouseReleased( MouseEvent me ) to add the action for displaying the popup menu in the following way:

private void checkPopupTrigger( MouseEvent me )
        {
            if ( me.isPopupTrigger() )
            {
                JTable source = (JTable)me.getSource();
                int row = source.rowAtPoint( me.getPoint() );
                int column = source.columnAtPoint( me.getPoint() );

                if (! source.isRowSelected(row))
                    source.changeSelection(row, column, false, false);

                popupMenu.show( me.getComponent(), me.getX(), me.getY() );
            }

        }

The problem I have is that upon first load the shortcut will work fine, it will work without the JPopupMenu open & therefore no need to right click and display the menu if you already know the shortcut you want to press. If I right click and the popup menu gets displayed the shotcut will no longer work once the popupmenu isn't visible.

If I inspect my JTable instance ( in Eclipse IDE ) it actually appears that the JPopupMenu component gets removed from the table after the following line is called :

popupMenu.show( me.getComponent(), me.getX(), me.getY() );

Is there a reason for this behaviour? I can't seem to find out what's going on after various different approaches. I have also tried using:

table.setComponentPopupMenu(myPopupMenu);

But by doing the above, although the menu will display the shortcuts never work unless the popupmenu is visible.

I am running on Windows 8 if that might be of any relevance to the key bindings getting assigned.

Any help is greatly appreciated, I did have this working using a separate KeyListener on the JTable as well as the JPopupMenu , but that meant assigning all the shortcuts twice, once on the popup and again for the separate KeyListener . After getting it to work with just the JPopupMenu I now hope to be able to find out why the shortcuts only work before ( and during ) the menu being displayed. Even if I don't click on an item in the popup menu the shortcuts will not work after the menu has become hidden.

Thank you.

Answer 1

But by doing the above, although the menu will display the shortcuts never work unless the popupmenu is visible.

This is the proper behaviour. Accelerators should only work when a component is visible. So unless the popup is visible the accelerators will not work.

If you want an accelerator to work all the time then you should be using a JMenuBar with JMenus and JMenuItems that contain the accelerators. I like this approach because if provided self documentation for each accelerator.

Or another approach is to manually add Key Bindings for all your accelerators. This is the way all the default Actions of JTable are implemented.