How do I disable keyboard events in JTextArea?

The following example demonstrate how to disable some keys in JTextArea and JScrollPane using the InputMap. In the disableKeys() method below we disable the arrow keys including the UP, DOWN, LEFT and RIGHT.

Let’s see the code snippet below:

package org.kodejava.swing;

import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;

public class TextAreaDisableKeyDemo extends JFrame {
    public TextAreaDisableKeyDemo() {
        initialize();
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(
                () -> new TextAreaDisableKeyDemo().setVisible(true));
    }

    private void initialize() {
        setSize(500, 200);
        setTitle("Disable Keys Demo");
        setLayout(new BorderLayout());
        setDefaultCloseOperation(WindowConstants.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);

        JTextArea textArea = new JTextArea("Hello World!");
        JScrollPane scrollPane = new JScrollPane(textArea);
        disableKeys(textArea.getInputMap());
        disableKeys(scrollPane.getInputMap(
                JComponent.WHEN_ANCESTOR_OF_FOCUSED_COMPONENT));

        getContentPane().add(scrollPane, BorderLayout.CENTER);
    }

    private void disableKeys(InputMap inputMap) {
        String[] keys = {"UP", "DOWN", "LEFT", "RIGHT"};
        for (String key : keys) {
            inputMap.put(KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(key), "none");
        }
    }
}

The output of the code snippet above is:

Disable Keyboard Events in JTextArea

How do I create a scrollable JTable component?

To create a scrollable JTable component we have to use a JScrollPane as the container of the JTable. Besides, that we also need to set the table auto resize mode to JTable.AUTO_RESIZE_OFF so that a horizontal scroll bar displayed by the scroll pane when needed. If we do not turn off the auto resize mode, the columns of the table will be resized to fit the available window size.

package org.kodejava.swing;

import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.JScrollPane;
import javax.swing.JTable;
import javax.swing.SwingUtilities;
import javax.swing.WindowConstants;
import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.Dimension;

public class ScrollableJTable extends JPanel {
    public ScrollableJTable() {
        initializeUI();
    }

    private static void showFrame() {
        JPanel panel = new ScrollableJTable();
        panel.setOpaque(true);

        JFrame frame = new JFrame();
        frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(WindowConstants.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        frame.setTitle("Scrollable JTable");
        frame.setContentPane(panel);
        frame.pack();
        frame.setVisible(true);
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(ScrollableJTable::showFrame);
    }

    private void initializeUI() {
        setLayout(new BorderLayout());
        setPreferredSize(new Dimension(500, 250));

        JTable table = new JTable(20, 20);

        // Turn off JTable's auto resize so that JScrollPane will show a horizontal
        // scroll bar.
        table.setAutoResizeMode(JTable.AUTO_RESIZE_OFF);

        JScrollPane pane = new JScrollPane(table);
        add(pane, BorderLayout.CENTER);
    }
}

Below is the result of the code snippet above.

Scrollable JTable Component Demo

Scrollable JTable Component Demo