What is the order of fired events in a combobox ItemListener

Question

I'm adding an ItemListener to a combobox and I want to know if the event ItemEvent.DESELECTED is always triggered BEFORE the event ItemEvent.SELECTED, or if the order is unspecified.

On a simple example, it seems that DESELECTED is fired before, but can I trust this example?

    combo = new JComboBox<String>(new String[}{"A","B","C"});
    combo.addItemListener(new ItemListener()
    {

        @Override
        public void itemStateChanged(final ItemEvent e)
        {
            if(e.getStateChange() == ItemEvent.SELECTED)
            {
                logger.debug("{} selected", e.getItem());
                // Load the file selected in the JTextArea using JTextArea.setDocument()
            }
            else if(e.getStateChange() == ItemEvent.DESELECTED)
            {
                logger.debug("{} deselected", e.getItem());
                // If doc in the textarea has been modified, save it now
            }
        }
    });

To add context to the question, I use the combo to select a file to load in a JTextArea. The user can edit the file via the textarea. If she selects another file in the combo, I want to inform her that the previous file has been edited and ask her confirmation to save the edits. Can I implement this safely in the ItemListener of the combo? By safely, I mean can I be sure that if I call textArea.getText() at this point in time (item DESELECTED), am I sure that the textarea is not already filled up with the content of the new file to load?

Answer 1

In general, the order is not specified. In particular, the combo selection and text display is irrelevant to the underlying Document state. If the user elects to continue editing, simply restore the modified Document to the text area.