JTable and sorting

Question

I have little problem with sorting my JTable, I can't get the functionality I want. In my window I have something like total commander, in one column there are files and if there is any, parent folder in the other one there is or number of bytes. What I want is, if I click on File Name column I want the parent folder always on top, then ascending/descending folder names and then ascending/descending file names and if I click on File Type I want directories to remain untouched and then I want normal files in ascending/descending order by their size.

I tried to toy with RowSorters, my own comparators but as I said I can't get what I want, should I catch the event myself, then manually sort values and update my model (which I use btw.)? Is there some elegant way to do what I want?

Answer 1

It sounds like you might want to use a tree table instead. Please take a look at: http://java.sun.com/products/jfc/tsc/articles/treetable1/

If you want to use JTable itself then you can try to implement sorting in table model as it might be easier.

TableRowSorter<TableModel> sorter =
    new TableRowSorter<TableModel>(getModel()) {
    Map<Integer, SortKey> keys = new HashMap<Integer, SortKey>();

    public void toggleSortOrder(int column)
    {
        SortKey key = keys.get(column);
        SortOrder order = null;
        // Get last sort order.
        if (key != null) {
            if (key.getSortOrder() == SortOrder.DESCENDING){
                order = SortOrder.ASCENDING;
            }
            else {
                order = SortOrder.DESCENDING;
            }
        }
        else {
            order = SortOrder.DESCENDING;
        }

        keys.put(new SortKey(column, order));
        getTableModel().sort(keys);
    }
};

setRowSorter(sorter);