Best way to implement a selection box from a large number of entries

Question

I have a large set of data from which the user has to select one. I\'m thinking of a way to implement it (of course, in a GUI). I have a few ideas. But just thought of posti

Answer 1

You could take a look at SwingLab's autocomplete feature, it allows you to attach it to a JCombBox, JList or JTextComponent

Answer 2

Autocomplete is what you are probably looking for. Google for "java swing jcombobox autocomplete" and limit results for the last couple of years to get relevant results. There will be a lot of examples and ideas on how to implement this with custom code.

I believe there is also some custom libraries like "swingx" that provide at least partial or full implementations to save time.

http://swingx.java.net/

They have released code as recently as the beginning of this years so it appears active and might have what you need.

Answer 3

use AutoComplete JComboBox/JTextField

• based on Standard Java Classes

• no issue with larger sets of data

• no issue with Focus, BackSpace Key, Caret

• for better performance to required sort the array before use

• simple workaround for setStrict(true/false), restrict input to array