Search uneditable combo box using rendered value

[jeffastorey]

I'm using the AutoCompletion on a combo box, and when it is uneditable, it still allows me to search, which is nice. But, it looks like it is searching on the actual element values, and not the rendered values when using a custom renderer.

So for example, if I have a combo box of a Person object, and the combo box renders the object using the person.name, the combo box might look something like
Bill
Joe
Tom

But, when trying to use search, since the objects in the combo box are actually Person objects and not strings, the search will not find them. Is there a way to use the rendered value for searching, since that is what the user will see?

Note: I have been able to make this work by overriding convertElementToString, getting the renderer from the combo, and rendering the value to determine what the rendered value is, but this is not a 100% solution, since I have to try to get the text from the list cell component by checking what kind of component it is and calling the correct method (e.g. if it's a JLabel, call ((JLabel)component).getText())

Thanks,
Jeff

[JIDE Support]

AutoCompletion uses a Searchable. By default a ComboBoxSearchable is created which uses item.toString() to convert the element value to String. So you can override toString on your element class to make it working. Or you can subclass ComboBoxSearchable's convertElementToString where you can provide a way to convert the element to String.

[jeffastorey]

Thanks, I ended up creating a searchable (see my note above). It's not perfect, because it only handles when the renderer is certain types of components, but for most cases it should work.

[JIDE Support]

It is not a good idea to convert the value to String by retrieving the list cell renderer component as it will slow down the performance. We have no intention to deal with the renderer component in our code because convertElementToString is suppose to be a Model concept and the renderer component a View concept. We certainly don't want to mix them. Overriding convertElementToString properly is the only way I can suggest.

[jeffastorey]

Thank you. I appreciate the input.