Question

I was looking for this answer in here but didn’t find it, so I’m writing my own answer below if someone need it.

Feel free to correct anything if needed.

Answer 1

So, in order to make a solution for both cases (JList and JTable) I made a custom listener that will be applied to the lists and table in question.

The listener is :

public class DeselectOnClickListener extends MouseAdapter
{   
    @Override
    public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e) {
        super.mouseClicked(e);
        clearselection(e);      
    }

    @Override
    public void mousePressed(MouseEvent e) {
        super.mousePressed(e);
        clearselection(e);
    }

    @Override
    public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent e) {
        super.mouseReleased(e);
        clearselection(e);
    }

    public void clearselection (MouseEvent e){      
        if (e.getComponent() instanceof JTable){
            Point pClicked = e.getPoint();
            JTable table = (JTable) e.getSource();
            int index = table.rowAtPoint(pClicked);
            if (index == -1){
                table.clearSelection();
            }

        } else if (e.getComponent() instanceof JList){
            Point pClicked = e.getPoint();
            JList<?> list = (JList<?>) e.getSource();
            int index = list.locationToIndex(pClicked);
            Rectangle rec = list.getCellBounds(index, index);
            if (rec==null || !rec.contains(pClicked)){
                list.clearSelection();
            }
        }
    }
}

Notice that this works well in SINGLE_SELECCTION, but if we want to use MULTIPLE_INTERVAL_SELECTION or SINGLE_INTERVAL_SELECTION I would recommend not to override mouseReleased(MouseEvent e) as it will clear selection if the mouse button is released outside the selection range.

PD: for this last point I’ve done the following fix:

@Override
    public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent e) {
        super.mouseReleased(e);
        if (! isIntervalSelectionMode(e)){
            clearselection(e);
        }
    }

    public boolean isIntervalSelectionMode (MouseEvent e){
        boolean isIntervalSelection = false;
        if (e.getComponent() instanceof JTable){
            isIntervalSelection = ((JTable)e.getSource()).getSelectionModel().getSelectionMode() 
                        != ListSelectionModel.SINGLE_SELECTION;
        }else if (e.getComponent() instanceof JList){
            isIntervalSelection = ((JList<?>)e.getSource()).getSelectionModel().getSelectionMode() 
                    != ListSelectionModel.SINGLE_SELECTION;
        }
        return isIntervalSelection;
    }