Returning a TableView back to an unsorted state in JavaFX 8.0

by Jonathan Giles | Aug 4, 2013 | Controls, General

One of the big features I’ve known people have wanted for a long time (hey, I’ve wanted it too!) is support for returning a TableView back to its original, unsorted state after being sorted by the end user. In general the user interaction goes something like this:

1. Click on a TableView column header once. Everything sorts in ascending order. Great!
2. Click on the same column header again. Everything sorts in descending order. We’re on a roll here!
3. Click on the same column again. The sort arrow disappears, and…….nothing 🙁

Of course, what should happen here is that the order of the items in the table should be reset back to their original order, from before the user ever clicked on anything. If you step behind the curtains with me for the briefest of moments, you’ll realise that the only way we can really do this is to of course keep a copy of the list in its original state (or a list of all the changes to the original list, such that we can unwind the changes later on). I never really wanted to do this, as you’re just setting yourself up for failure / pain / bugs / etc. What I always wanted to do was follow the wonderful GlazedLists approach from the Swing days, where the collections themselves became smarter, and the TableView remained mostly* inconsiderate of the type of collection given to it.
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