How to set selected index JComboBox by value

Arto Uusikangas picture Arto Uusikangas · Nov 30, 2011 · Viewed 187.6k times · Source

I want to set the selected index in a JComboBox by the value not the index. How to do that? Example

public class ComboItem {

    private String value;
    private String label;

    public ComboItem(String value, String label) {
        this.value = value;
        this.label = label;
    }

    public String getValue() {
        return this.value;
    }

    public String getLabel() {
        return this.label;
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return label;
    }
}

JComboBox test = new JComboBox();
test.addItem(new ComboItem(0, "orange"));
test.addItem(new ComboItem(1, "pear"));
test.addItem(new ComboItem(2, "apple"));
test.addItem(new ComboItem(3, "banana"));
test.setSelectedItem("banana");

Ok, I have modified my question a bit. I forgot that i have a custom item inside my JComboBox that makes it a bit more difficult. i cant do setSelectedItem as i have a ComboItem inside each item. So still, how do i get this done?

Answer

JB Nizet picture JB Nizet · Nov 30, 2011

setSelectedItem("banana"). You could have found it yourself by just reading the javadoc.

Edit: since you changed the question, I'll change my answer.

If you want to select the item having the "banana" label, then you have two solutions:

  1. Iterate through the items to find the one (or the index of the one) which has the given label, and then call setSelectedItem(theFoundItem) (or setSelectedIndex(theFoundIndex))
  2. Override equals and hashCode in ComboItem so that two ComboItem instances having the same name are equal, and simply use setSelectedItem(new ComboItem(anyNumber, "banana"));