Word wrap in JList items

Question

I have a JList with very long item names that cause the horizontal scroll-bar to appear in scroll-pane.

Is there anyway that I can word wrap so that the whole whole item name appears in 2 rows yet can be selected in one click? I.E it should still behave as a single item but be displayed in two rows.

Here is what I did after seeing the example below

I added a new class to my project MyCellRenderer and then I went added MyList.setCellRenderer(new MyCellRenderer(80)); in the post creation code of my List. Is there anything else I need to do?

I seem to recall someone (was it Andrew) using a JLabel, HTML and simple style sheets to solve something like this. — Hovercraft Full Of Eels, Nov 19 '11 at 21:00
Yes, of course, it was Andrew: [is-there-some-word-wrap-property-of-jlabel-exist](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7861724/is-there-some-word-wrap-property-of-jlabel-exist/7861833#7861833). I do believe that this concept can also be used in your custom cell renderer. — Hovercraft Full Of Eels, Nov 19 '11 at 21:05
Another alternative (why is everybody looking at me funny?) is to use a tool-tip for the long name and "Value is..." for the label itself. Of course this would not work very well with the one concrete example given in HFoEs answer. I would hate to have to mouse-over the list to distinguish between every guy called "Mohamed". — Andrew Thompson, Nov 20 '11 at 01:07

score 20 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 19 '11 at 21:21

Yep, using Andrew's code, I came up with something like this:

import java.awt.Component;
import javax.swing.*;

public class JListLimitWidth {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      String[] names = { "John Smith", "engelbert humperdinck",
            "john jacob jingleheimer schmidt" };
      MyCellRenderer cellRenderer = new MyCellRenderer(80);
      JList list = new JList(names);
      list.setCellRenderer(cellRenderer);
      JScrollPane sPane = new JScrollPane(list);
      JPanel panel = new JPanel();
      panel.add(sPane);
      JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, panel);

   }
}

class MyCellRenderer extends DefaultListCellRenderer {
   public static final String HTML_1 = "<html><body style='width: ";
   public static final String HTML_2 = "px'>";
   public static final String HTML_3 = "</html>";
   private int width;

   public MyCellRenderer(int width) {
      this.width = width;
   }

   @Override
   public Component getListCellRendererComponent(JList list, Object value,
         int index, boolean isSelected, boolean cellHasFocus) {
      String text = HTML_1 + String.valueOf(width) + HTML_2 + value.toString()
            + HTML_3;
      return super.getListCellRendererComponent(list, text, index, isSelected,
            cellHasFocus);
   }

}

It wasn't my smarts that did this but this one here: [Andrew's post](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7861724/is-there-some-word-wrap-property-of-jlabel-exist/7861833#7861833). I can't upvote his answer more than once, but I encourage anyone who thinks that my answer was helpful to upvote the link. — Hovercraft Full Of Eels, Nov 19 '11 at 21:27
(as you all know, including @Andrew Thompson, I dont like html tricksing overly much, especially not if mis-used for hard-coded sizing ) so, why not use the actual with of the list instead of the fixed? — kleopatra, Nov 20 '11 at 11:52
Hey @HovercraftFullOfEels I just tried this code ... it doesnt seem to work for me.... I am not developing anything on browser it is a pure java appication and it doesnot wrap the text ... could you help me out. Here is what I did I added a new class to my project MyCellRenderer and then I went added MyList.setCellRenderer(new MyCellRenderer(80)); in the post creation code of my List. Is there anything else I need to do? Thanks for you help and paitence — koool, Nov 20 '11 at 18:39

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 09 '18 at 11:59

0

It can be done even easier. You can create JList by consatructor with ListModel. In CustomListModel extends AbstractListModel, getElementAt() method can returns String with same html-formatted text. So this way do the same without cell renderer modification.

answered Jan 09 '18 at 11:59

Dmitry V

1

2

Wrapping is UI and not model related. Changing the model to accommodate the UI is bad. – SurfMan Jan 09 '18 at 12:03

score -1 · Answer 3 · edited Mar 18 '16 at 19:25

-1

You can also compute dynamically the width (instead of a fixed value):

String text = HTML_1 + String.valueOf(**list.getWidth()**) + HTML_2 + value.toString() + HTML_3;

So if the panel resizes the list, wrapping remains correct.

Update

And the result looks like this:

edited Mar 18 '16 at 19:25

Jason

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answered Aug 07 '12 at 17:08

steph

1

This does not work. If the JList is resized the height of the row will not be adjusted and funny visual things happen. See my attached image... I added green and red to help illustrate. – Jason Mar 18 '16 at 19:25

Word wrap in JList items

3 Answers3

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