How to copy/paste table cells in a TableView

Question

Problem

One of the very basic needs when you deal with tables is to copy/paste data of table cells. The JavaFX TableView doesn\'t support it out of

Answer 1

After some digging and reading about solutions with reflection I found out myself that it's easier than I thought. And most important: Without reflection.

I thought I'd share the code, hope it'll be of help to others.

Here's the basic method to modify a cell. This is just what I found out. In case someone knows a better method, then please share it.

        // get cell
        TableColumn tableColumn = table.getColumns().get(colIndex);
        ObservableValue observableValue = tableColumn.getCellObservableValue(rowIndex);

        if( observableValue instanceof StringProperty) { 

            ((StringProperty) observableValue).set(clipboardCellContent);

        }

So the paste method basically looks like this:

public static void pasteClipboard( TableView<?> table) {

    // abort if there's not cell selected to start with
    if( table.getSelectionModel().getSelectedCells().size() == 0) {
        return;
    }

    // get the cell position to start with
    TablePosition pasteCellPosition = table.getSelectionModel().getSelectedCells().get(0);

    System.out.println("Pasting into cell " + pasteCellPosition);

    String pasteString = Clipboard.getSystemClipboard().getString();

    System.out.println(pasteString);

    int rowClipboard = -1;

    StringTokenizer rowTokenizer = new StringTokenizer( pasteString, "\n");
    while( rowTokenizer.hasMoreTokens()) {

        rowClipboard++;

        String rowString = rowTokenizer.nextToken();

        StringTokenizer columnTokenizer = new StringTokenizer( rowString, "\t");

        int colClipboard = -1;

        while( columnTokenizer.hasMoreTokens()) {

            colClipboard++;

            // calculate the position in the table cell
            int rowTable = pasteCellPosition.getRow() + rowClipboard;
            int colTable = pasteCellPosition.getColumn() + colClipboard;

            // skip if we reached the end of the table
            if( rowTable >= table.getItems().size()) {
                continue;
            }
            if( colTable >= table.getColumns().size()) {
                continue;
            }

            String clipboardCellContent = columnTokenizer.nextToken();

            // System.out.println( rowClipboard + "/" + colClipboard + ": " + cell);

            // get cell
            TableColumn tableColumn = table.getColumns().get(colTable);
            ObservableValue observableValue = tableColumn.getCellObservableValue(rowTable);

            System.out.println( rowTable + "/" + colTable + ": " +observableValue);

            // TODO: handle double, etc
            if( observableValue instanceof StringProperty) { 

                ((StringProperty) observableValue).set(clipboardCellContent);

            }
            else if( observableValue instanceof IntegerProperty) { 

                int value;
                try {
                    value = NumberFormat.getInstance().parse(clipboardCellContent).intValue();
                    ((IntegerProperty) observableValue).set(value);
                } catch (ParseException e) {
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }

            }
        }

    }

}

You can get the full code on this gist.