Question

JTable’s default behavior is changing focus to next cell and I want to force it to move focus to next component (e.g. JTextField) on TAB key pressed.
I overrided isCellEditable method of DefaultTableModel to always return false:

public boolean isCellEditable(int rowIndex, int columnIndex) {
    return false;
}

But it still doesn’t change focus to next component!
How should I make JTable change focus to next component instead of next cell?

Answer 1

If you really want this, you need to change the default behavior of the tables action map.

ActionMap am = table.getActionMap();
am.put("selectPreviousColumnCell", new PreviousFocusHandler());    
am.put("selectNextColumnCell", new NextFocusHandler());    

Then you need a couple of actions to handle the traversal

public class PreviousFocusHandler extends AbstractAction {
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
        KeyboardFocusManager manager = KeyboardFocusManager.getCurrentKeyboardFocusManager();
        manager.focusPreviousComponent();
    }
}

public class NextFocusHandler extends AbstractAction {
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
        KeyboardFocusManager manager = KeyboardFocusManager.getCurrentKeyboardFocusManager();
        manager.focusNextComponent();
    }
}

Another approach would be to disable the underlying Action…

ActionMap am = table.getActionMap();
am.get("selectPreviousColumnCell").setEnabled(false);
am.get("selectNextColumnCell").setEnabled(false);

(haven’t tested this)

The benefit of this approach is can enable/disable the behaviour as you need it without needing to maintain a reference to the old Actions