Question

I don’t know if this is possible.

// Adding values to a listbox in Java
DefaultListModel<String> model = new DefaultListModel<String>();
model.addElement("One");
model.addElement("Two");
list1.setModel(model);

What I want is somehow to store a value in the listbox as follows:

If user clicks on "One", ID=1 is retrieved.
If user clicks on "Two", ID=2 is retrieved.

I know how to retrieve the selected value, but I want to store a hidden ID.
This is easy to do with web based programming but not sure if it could be done with Java.

Answer 1

Yes this is eminently possible, but the key is not to store Strings in the Model but instead objects that hold Strings and id’s, etc.

Assuming a class, MyFoo that holds these fields.

DefaultListModel<MyFoo> model = new DefaultListModel<String>();
model.addElement(new MyFoo("One", 1));
model.addElement(new MyFoo("Two", 2));
list1.setModel(model);

The only kicker is that you’ll want to give the JList a ListCellRenderer that displays only the Number String, but that’s not hard to do, and the tutorials will show you how to do this.

Another solution is to create a HashMap<String, Integer> that maps the number String with its related int, but I like the first solution better as it seems cleaner to me.