Question

After much frustration with getting a JFormattedTextField to work with my custom formats, I was wondering if there was a Formatter or FormatterFactory that uses regular expressions?

My idea is that if there is one, then I could wrap it in a static class and invoke it like so:

mFormattedTextField.setFormatterFactory(
    SomeStaticClass.getRegexFormatFactory("^(\\d{1,}h)(\\s([0-5])?[0-9]m)?$"));

---

See my previous question for more background:
" I want to use a JFormattedTextField to allow the user to input time duration values into a form. Sample valid values are: 2h 30m 72h 15m 6h 0h"

Answer 1

Have you read this article? In case that link rots away, it says all you really need to do override AbstractFormatter’s stringToValue method, like this:

public Object stringToValue(String text) throws ParseException {
    Pattern pattern = getPattern();

    if (pattern != null) {
        Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(text);

        if (matcher.matches()) {
            return super.stringToValue(text);
        }
        throw new ParseException("Pattern did not match", 0);
    }
    return text;
}

Actually, a quick search yields several fully-implemented, free solutions; were none of those sufficient to your needs?