Autocomplete in a Java File Chooser

Question

I'm looking for a way to add auto complete functionality in Java a File Chooser Dialog. Seems Java Swing JFileChooser doesn't support that. The only alternative I found is gtk FileChooser I would love to whether any other alternatives exist.

Answer 1

if one has add auto functionality then he/she has to access the text field but that is not possible in normal ways..

A kind of hack was is there which searches for all the components and then finds the instance of textfield and returns it.

here is the code..

private  JTextField dis(JFileChooser jf) {
    boolean hide =false;
    LinkedList<Component> queue = new LinkedList<Component>();
    queue.add(jf);
    JTextField jtf=new JTextField();
    while(queue.size() != 0) {
        Component[] c = ((Container) queue.removeFirst()).getComponents();   
        for(int i = 0; i < c.length; i++) {                        
            queue.add(c[i]);    

            if(c[i] instanceof JTextField) {
                jtf = (JTextField) c[i];
                jtf.setVisible(true);
                jtf.setEnabled(true);
                jtf.setText(" hello ");
                return jtf;
            }


    }           
}


return jtf;

}

and here is the link for class that extends JFileChooser that applies autocomplete http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/holyvincent/FileChooser/VinFC.java

Please report if there are bugs in the extended class. Thanks

Answer 2

How about implementing your own FileChooser where you will be able to add a DocumentListener to the TextField which holds your filepath + filename in the file chooser. Not sure if you can do the above with a JFileChooser. It will be SOME amount of code though if you want to get the behaviour of your file chooser to match the default JFileChooser along with the added autocomplete feature.

Answer 3

One alternative would be to use SWT's FileDialog - this uses the native operating system file dialog (e.g. GTK on Linux), so you get the exact same behaviour which the users are used to from their OS. This includes autocomplete on Linux/GTK and Mac (I don't know, if Windows provides that, too?)

I'm not sure at all, if it's worth to include SWT just for that purpose, but I wanted to mention this alternative.