Java Swing save and load workspace/settings

Question

I have a Java Swing application that contains a bunch of frames which in turn predominantly contains tables that display large amounts of data. Since it is always a hassle and its time consuming to arrange all windows and tables on startup, I would like to implement 'workspace'-functionality so that the user can save a setup of preference and on startup choose to automatically load the stored workspace to have all windows and tables appear as previously saved. Specifically, the settings that I wish to store in a workspace are:

• Active windows (JFrame) and their sizes and positions on screen
• Table settings, incl selected columns, column order, column width, sorting, filtering

Does anyone know of a smart and easy way to accomplish this without the obvious, and what seems like a very complex and cumbersome, solution of iterating over all open windows and saving each piece of information with the Preferences api? Thanks

Emissive

There is always 'serialize the entire GUI', but I suspect that 1) there will be non serializable parts of those GUIs 2) that it will be a hassle to get working right. – Heredity

I believe that you are correct on both suspicions. – Emissive

you might consider using (Better) Swing Application Framework which supports storing application state - among other niceties - painlessly (though switching to a new framework might be too invasive :-) – Turnery

BSAF might have been a good option if I had gone that route when I started, but suspect that it would be painful to switch now as you suggest. – Emissive

Answer 1

In this case, the obvious solution, java.util.prefs.Preferences, is probably the correct one. RCPrefs from this game is a simple example that demonstrates saving a variety of data types, including enum. The exact implementation is highly dependent on the application. While tedious, it needn't be especially complex. For expedience, the example uses static methods; frame and table preferences are probably worth a class each.

Dynasty

Thanks. The example was useful and I thought that the idea of making workspace-classes made sense. I created a WsFrame class that contains generic settings like position and size. This object can contain one or multiple specific settings like WsTable (for table settings). I opted against storing this information via Preferences and decided to simply serialize the list of WsFrame-objects via XStream and store as xml (as I am lazy and it is convenient to view/edit the output). Actually works pretty good. Thanks. – Emissive

Excellent. I may be spoiled, as my platform happens to use XML to implement Preferences. Ping me if you add this as contrasting answer; I think it would be useful. – Dynasty