JFreeChart has quite flexible support for crosshairs. To do what you described I would use an Overlay on the ChartPanel, and update the crosshairs from your ChartMouseListener. Here is a self-contained example (which I'll add to the collection of demos that we ship with the JFreeChart Developer Guide):
package org.jfree.chart.demo;
import java.awt.BasicStroke;
import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.geom.Rectangle2D;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.SwingUtilities;
import org.jfree.chart.ChartFactory;
import org.jfree.chart.ChartMouseEvent;
import org.jfree.chart.ChartMouseListener;
import org.jfree.chart.ChartPanel;
import org.jfree.chart.JFreeChart;
import org.jfree.chart.axis.ValueAxis;
import org.jfree.chart.panel.CrosshairOverlay;
import org.jfree.chart.plot.Crosshair;
import org.jfree.chart.plot.XYPlot;
import org.jfree.data.general.DatasetUtilities;
import org.jfree.data.xy.XYDataset;
import org.jfree.data.xy.XYSeries;
import org.jfree.data.xy.XYSeriesCollection;
import org.jfree.ui.RectangleEdge;
/**
* A demo showing crosshairs that follow the data points on an XYPlot.
*/
public class CrosshairOverlayDemo1 extends JFrame implements ChartMouseListener {
private ChartPanel chartPanel;
private Crosshair xCrosshair;
private Crosshair yCrosshair;
public CrosshairOverlayDemo1(String title) {
super(title);
setContentPane(createContent());
}
private JPanel createContent() {
JFreeChart chart = createChart(createDataset());
this.chartPanel = new ChartPanel(chart);
this.chartPanel.addChartMouseListener(this);
CrosshairOverlay crosshairOverlay = new CrosshairOverlay();
this.xCrosshair = new Crosshair(Double.NaN, Color.GRAY, new BasicStroke(0f));
this.xCrosshair.setLabelVisible(true);
this.yCrosshair = new Crosshair(Double.NaN, Color.GRAY, new BasicStroke(0f));
this.yCrosshair.setLabelVisible(true);
crosshairOverlay.addDomainCrosshair(xCrosshair);
crosshairOverlay.addRangeCrosshair(yCrosshair);
chartPanel.addOverlay(crosshairOverlay);
return chartPanel;
}
private JFreeChart createChart(XYDataset dataset) {
JFreeChart chart = ChartFactory.createXYLineChart("Crosshair Demo",
"X", "Y", dataset);
return chart;
}
private XYDataset createDataset() {
XYSeries series = new XYSeries("S1");
for (int x = 0; x < 10; x++) {
series.add(x, x + Math.random() * 4.0);
}
XYSeriesCollection dataset = new XYSeriesCollection(series);
return dataset;
}
@Override
public void chartMouseClicked(ChartMouseEvent event) {
// ignore
}
@Override
public void chartMouseMoved(ChartMouseEvent event) {
Rectangle2D dataArea = this.chartPanel.getScreenDataArea();
JFreeChart chart = event.getChart();
XYPlot plot = (XYPlot) chart.getPlot();
ValueAxis xAxis = plot.getDomainAxis();
double x = xAxis.java2DToValue(event.getTrigger().getX(), dataArea,
RectangleEdge.BOTTOM);
double y = DatasetUtilities.findYValue(plot.getDataset(), 0, x);
this.xCrosshair.setValue(x);
this.yCrosshair.setValue(y);
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
@Override
public void run() {
CrosshairOverlayDemo1 app = new CrosshairOverlayDemo1(
"JFreeChart: CrosshairOverlayDemo1.java");
app.pack();
app.setVisible(true);
}
});
}
}