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From: Daniele Futtorovic <da.futt.news@laposte-dot-net.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer
Subject: Re: JComboBox with IDentifiers
Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2012 18:49:20 +0200
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On 13/08/2012 18:22, Sax@DIST allegedly wrote:
> Hi markspace,
>  thanks a lot for the two links you suggested me about the Java Programming Language!   0;-)
> 
> The first one, about the "correct" usage of JComboBox itself, is very detailed and I think I can find what I need, reading the lots of examples.
> 
> The second one, about the database connection, will be very useful for me, as I need to get the data for the items of my JComboBox from a DataBase Table.
> 
> After all, my needs are very simple:
> (o) to read some records (fields required: 'IDentifier' and 'Description') from a DB-Table
> (o) to show the 'Description' of the records as Items of the JComboBox
> (o) to do something else with the 'IDentifier' of the selected Item within the JComboBox
> 
> Thanks again for your precious help,
>  Greetings.
>   Roberto
>    08-)

Hi Roberto,

You should create a custom data structure containing the data you need
(identifier and representation, from the looks of it), add them to the
JComboBox's contents, and use a custom renderer
(<http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/javax/swing/JComboBox.html#setRenderer(javax.swing.ListCellRenderer)>).
That way, the _items_ in the combo box will always be your custom data
structure instances (which you can use in #setSelectedItem(Object), for
instance; or returned by #getSelectedItem()), and the renderer controls
how they're displayed.

In addition -- I believe I've already seen something like this coded
somewhere -- you can write your own custom model
(<http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/javax/swing/ComboBoxModel.html>)
and have that hook directly to the database, possibly with on-demand,
lightweight loading of data.

HTH,
-- 
DF.