In this article, we are going to show you how to create a popup menu for JTable component like this:

This popup menu is shown up when the user right clicks over the table rows area. It provides three commands:

• • Add New Row: Appends a new empty row at the end of the table.
  • Remove Current Row: Deletes the currently selected row.
  • Remove All Rows: Deletes all rows in the table.

Notice that we will make the row at the mouse-clicked position automatically selected, which is a typical behavior. Let’s go through the steps to create such a program in Java Swing.

 

1. Creating popup menu for a JTable

It’s trivial to create a popup menu with some menu commands, for example:

JPopupMenu popupMenu = new JPopupMenu();
JMenuItem menuItemAdd = new JMenuItem("Add New Row");
JMenuItem menuItemRemove = new JMenuItem("Remove Current Row");
JMenuItem menuItemRemoveAll = new JMenuItem("Remove All Rows");

popupMenu.add(menuItemAdd);
popupMenu.add(menuItemRemove);
popupMenu.add(menuItemRemoveAll);

 

Add this popup menu for a JTable as follows:

JTable table = new JTable();
// set data model for the table...

// sets the popup menu for the table
table.setComponentPopupMenu(popupMenu);

  

2. Making a row selected when the popup menu is displayed

It’s a little trick to make a row automatically selected when the user right clicks on the table. Create a handler class for mouse-clicking events as follows:

package net.codejava.swing.jtable;

import java.awt.Point;
import java.awt.event.MouseAdapter;
import java.awt.event.MouseEvent;

import javax.swing.JTable;

/**
 * A mouse listener for a JTable component.
 * @author www.codejava.neet
 *
 */
public class TableMouseListener extends MouseAdapter {
	
	private JTable table;
	
	public TableMouseListener(JTable table) {
		this.table = table;
	}
	
	@Override
	public void mousePressed(MouseEvent event) {
		// selects the row at which point the mouse is clicked
		Point point = event.getPoint();
		int currentRow = table.rowAtPoint(point);
		table.setRowSelectionInterval(currentRow, currentRow);
	}
}

And add this listener to the table like this:

table.addMouseListener(new TableMouseListener(table)); 

 

3. JTable popup menu demo program

Following is a Swing demo program that incorporates the above stuffs. It creates a JTable with some dummy row data, and implements functions to add a new empty row, delete the selected row and delete all rows, as corresponding to the popup menu’s commands. Here’s the full source code:

package net.codejava.swing.jtable;

import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;

import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JMenuItem;
import javax.swing.JPopupMenu;
import javax.swing.JScrollPane;
import javax.swing.JTable;
import javax.swing.SwingUtilities;
import javax.swing.table.DefaultTableModel;

/**
 * A Swing program that demonstrates how to create a popup menu
 * for a JTable component.
 * @author www.codejava.net
 *
 */
public class JTablePopupMenuExample extends JFrame implements ActionListener {

	private JTable table;
	private DefaultTableModel tableModel; 
	private JPopupMenu popupMenu;
	private JMenuItem menuItemAdd;
	private JMenuItem menuItemRemove;
	private JMenuItem menuItemRemoveAll;
	
	public JTablePopupMenuExample() {
		super("JTable Popup Menu Example");
		
		// sample table data
		String[] columnNames = new String[] {"Title", "Author", "Publisher", "Published Date", "Pages", "Rating"};
		String[][] rowData = new String[][] {
			{"Effective Java", "Joshua Bloch", "Addision-Wesley", "May 08th 2008", "346", "5"},	
			{"Thinking in Java", "Bruce Eckel", "Prentice Hall", "Feb 26th 2006", "1150", "4"},	
			{"Head First Java", "Kathy Sierra & Bert Bates", "O'Reilly Media", "Feb 09th 2005", "688", "4.5"},	
		};
		
		
		// constructs the table with sample data
		tableModel = new DefaultTableModel(rowData, columnNames);
		table = new JTable(tableModel);
		
		// constructs the popup menu
		popupMenu = new JPopupMenu();
		menuItemAdd = new JMenuItem("Add New Row");
		menuItemRemove = new JMenuItem("Remove Current Row");
		menuItemRemoveAll = new JMenuItem("Remove All Rows");
		
		menuItemAdd.addActionListener(this);
		menuItemRemove.addActionListener(this);
		menuItemRemoveAll.addActionListener(this);
		
		popupMenu.add(menuItemAdd);
		popupMenu.add(menuItemRemove);
		popupMenu.add(menuItemRemoveAll);
		
		// sets the popup menu for the table
		table.setComponentPopupMenu(popupMenu);
		
		table.addMouseListener(new TableMouseListener(table));
		
		// adds the table to the frame
		add(new JScrollPane(table));
		
		setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
		setSize(640, 150);
		setLocationRelativeTo(null);
	}
	
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
			@Override
			public void run() {
				new JTablePopupMenuExample().setVisible(true);
			}
		});
	}

	@Override
	public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event) {
		JMenuItem menu = (JMenuItem) event.getSource();
		if (menu == menuItemAdd) {
			addNewRow();
		} else if (menu == menuItemRemove) {
			removeCurrentRow();
		} else if (menu == menuItemRemoveAll) {
			removeAllRows();
		}
	}
	
	private void addNewRow() {
		tableModel.addRow(new String[0]);
	}
	
	private void removeCurrentRow() {
		int selectedRow = table.getSelectedRow();
		tableModel.removeRow(selectedRow);
	}
	
	private void removeAllRows() {
		int rowCount = tableModel.getRowCount();
		for (int i = 0; i < rowCount; i++) {
			tableModel.removeRow(0);
		}
	}
}

Download the source code and demo program (executable jar file) in the Attachments section.

 

Related JTable Tutorials:

• A Simple JTable Example for Display
• Editable JTable Example
• JTable Simple Renderer Example
• 6 Techniques for Sorting JTable You Should Know
• How to scroll JTable row to visible area programmatically
• JTable column header custom renderer examples
• Setting column width and row height for JTable
• How to handle mouse clicking event on JTable column header
• How to create JComboBox cell editor for JTable