Tutorial on java JColorComboBox: JComboBox as Color Chooser

　

Swing toolkit provides a component called JColorChooser to choose colors. It allows users to select color from multiple color combinations. Some times our application may need simple component with an option to select only basic colors/ less number of color options unlike sepearate dialog with too may color options[JColorChooser]. This JColorComboBox may serve the need.

I wanted my color chooser to behave like JComboBox. The popup shows all 12 colors and their names, among all of them one color can be choosen. see the below image.

I created two classes

         1. JColorComboBox

         2. ColorRenderer

JColorComboBox extends the JComboBox and ColorRenderer extends JLabel and implements ListCellRenderer.

import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.Component;
import java.awt.Font;
import java.util.Enumeration;
import java.util.Hashtable;
import javax.swing.*;
/**
*
* @author sharath
*/
public class JColorComboBox extends JComboBox {

static Hashtable<String, Color> colors;

public JColorComboBox() {
super();
DefaultComboBoxModel model = new DefaultComboBoxModel();
Enumeration colorNames = addColors().keys();
while(colorNames.hasMoreElements()){
String temp = colorNames.nextElement().toString();
model.addElement(temp);
System.out.println("colors"+temp);
}
setModel(model);
setRenderer(new ColorRenderer());
this.setOpaque(true);
this.setSelectedIndex(0);
}
@Override
public void setSelectedItem(Object anObject) {
super.setSelectedItem(anObject);

setBackground((Color)colors.get(anObject));
setFont(new Font(Font.SANS_SERIF, Font.PLAIN, 15));
if(anObject.toString().equals("BLACK") || anObject.toString().equals("DARK_GRAY")){
setForeground(Color.white);
}
}
public Color getSelectedColor(){

return this.getBackground();
} 

private Hashtable addColors(){

colors = new <String, Color>Hashtable();

colors.put("WHITE", Color.WHITE);
colors.put("BLUE", Color.BLUE);
colors.put("GREEN", Color.GREEN);
colors.put("YELLOW", Color.YELLOW);
colors.put("ORANGE", Color.ORANGE);
colors.put("CYAN", Color.CYAN);
colors.put("DARK_GRAY", Color.DARK_GRAY);
colors.put("GRAY", Color.GRAY);
colors.put("RED", Color.RED);
colors.put("PINK",Color.PINK);
colors.put("MAGENTA", Color.MAGENTA);
colors.put("BLACK", Color.BLACK);

return colors;
}
　
class ColorRenderer extends JLabel implements javax.swing.ListCellRenderer {
public ColorRenderer() {
this.setOpaque(true);
}
public Component getListCellRendererComponent(JList list, Object key, int index,
boolean isSelected, boolean cellHasFocus) {

Color color = colors.get(key);;
String name = key.toString();

list.setSelectionBackground(null);
list.setSelectionForeground(null);

if(isSelected){
setBorder(BorderFactory.createEtchedBorder());
} else {
setBorder(null);
}
setFont(new Font(Font.SANS_SERIF, Font.PLAIN, 15));
setBackground(color);
setText(name);
setForeground(Color.black);
if(name.equals("BLACK") || name.equals("DARK_GRAY")){
setForeground(Color.white);
}

return this;
}
}
}

Demo Application:

The below code creates a JFrame by adding JColorComboBox to it.

　

/**
*
* @author sharath
*/
import java.awt.GridLayout;
import javax.swing.JComboBox;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.UIManager;
import javax.swing.*;
public class StartGUIApp {
public static void main(String[] args)throws Exception {
UIManager.setLookAndFeel(UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName());
JFrame.setDefaultLookAndFeelDecorated(true);

JPanel panel = new JPanel();
JLabel label = new JLabel("Select Color");
JColorComboBox box = new JColorComboBox();
panel.add(box);
panel.add(label);
panel.setLayout(null);
label.setBounds(20,20,60,30);
box.setBounds(100,20,140,30);
panel.setSize(250, 100);

JFrame frame = new JFrame();
frame.getContentPane().add(panel);
frame.setSize(panel.getWidth(), panel.getHeight());
setFrameProperties(frame);
}
static private void setFrameProperties(JFrame frame) {
frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
frame.setVisible(true);
}
}