Filter dynamically jTable by column value

Question

I need to dynamically filter my JTable by a value from a specific column. So if i have 2 columns, for example "Country" and "Capital", i want to filter only by column Country. I found part of the solution of my problem by implementing this code:

import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JLabel;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.JScrollPane;
import javax.swing.JTable;
import javax.swing.JTextField;
import javax.swing.RowFilter;
import javax.swing.SwingUtilities;
import javax.swing.event.DocumentEvent;
import javax.swing.event.DocumentListener;
import javax.swing.table.DefaultTableModel;
import javax.swing.table.TableModel;
import javax.swing.table.TableRowSorter;

public class TestTableSortFilter extends JPanel {

    private String[] columnNames
            = {"Country", "Capital", "Population in Millions", "Democracy"};

    private Object[][] data = {
        {"USA", "Washington DC", 280, true},
        {"Canada", "Ottawa", 32, true},
        {"United Kingdom", "London", 60, true},
        {"Germany", "Berlin", 83, true},
        {"France", "Paris", 60, true},
        {"Norway", "Oslo", 4.5, true},
        {"India", "New Delhi", 1046, true}
    };

    private DefaultTableModel model = new DefaultTableModel(data, columnNames);
    private JTable jTable = new JTable(model);

    private TableRowSorter<TableModel> rowSorter
            = new TableRowSorter<>(jTable.getModel());

    private JTextField jtfFilter = new JTextField();
    private JButton jbtFilter = new JButton("Filter");

    public TestTableSortFilter() {
        jTable.setRowSorter(rowSorter);

        JPanel panel = new JPanel(new BorderLayout());
        panel.add(new JLabel("Specify a word to match:"),
                BorderLayout.WEST);
        panel.add(jtfFilter, BorderLayout.CENTER);

        setLayout(new BorderLayout());
        add(panel, BorderLayout.SOUTH);
        add(new JScrollPane(jTable), BorderLayout.CENTER);

        jtfFilter.getDocument().addDocumentListener(new DocumentListener(){

            @Override
            public void insertUpdate(DocumentEvent e) {
                String text = jtfFilter.getText();

                if (text.trim().length() == 0) {
                    rowSorter.setRowFilter(null);
                } else {
                    rowSorter.setRowFilter(RowFilter.regexFilter("(?i)" + text));
                }
            }

            @Override
            public void removeUpdate(DocumentEvent e) {
                String text = jtfFilter.getText();

                if (text.trim().length() == 0) {
                    rowSorter.setRowFilter(null);
                } else {
                    rowSorter.setRowFilter(RowFilter.regexFilter("(?i)" + text));
                }
            }

            @Override
            public void changedUpdate(DocumentEvent e) {
                throw new UnsupportedOperationException("Not supported yet."); //To change body of generated methods, choose Tools | Templates.
            }

        });
    }

The problem is, when i filter the table, it filters it by all columns, not a specific one. Thank you for your help in advance.

Answer 1

Read the section from the Swing tutorial on Sorting and Filtering for a working example that filters on a single column.

The key is to specify the column when you create the regex filter. You can also check the API for the RowFilter.regexFilter(...) for the parameters.