You want to use a DocumentListener, along with the row filter. You can see how to Write a DocumentListener.
Basically the listener listens for changes in the underlying document of the text field. From the methods you override in the DocumentListener, you can get the text, like you're currently doing, and set the regex ex filter like you're currently doing
Here's simple example (disregard the applet. I just got the boilerplate code from this post and added the document listener). Note: that same post has an answer provided that will allow you to filter in a case-insensitive way, if you're looking for that functionality
import javax.swing.JApplet;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JLabel;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.JScrollPane;
import javax.swing.JTable;
import javax.swing.JTextField;
import javax.swing.RowFilter;
import javax.swing.event.DocumentEvent;
import javax.swing.event.DocumentListener;
import javax.swing.table.TableModel;
import javax.swing.table.TableRowSorter;
public class TestTableSorterFilter extends JApplet {
private String[] columnNames
= {"Country", "Capital", "Population in Millions", "Democracy"};
private Object[][] data = {
{"USA", "Washington DC", 280, true},
{"Canada", "Ottawa", 32, true},
{"United Kingdom", "London", 60, true},
{"Germany", "Berlin", 83, true},
{"France", "Paris", 60, true},
{"Norway", "Oslo", 4.5, true},
{"India", "New Delhi", 1046, true}
};
private JTable jTable = new JTable(data, columnNames);
private TableRowSorter<TableModel> rowSorter
= new TableRowSorter<>(jTable.getModel());
private JTextField jtfFilter = new JTextField();
private JButton jbtFilter = new JButton("Filter");
public TestTableSorterFilter() {
jTable.setRowSorter(rowSorter);
JPanel panel = new JPanel(new BorderLayout());
panel.add(new JLabel("Specify a word to match:"),
BorderLayout.WEST);
panel.add(jtfFilter, BorderLayout.CENTER);
add(panel, BorderLayout.SOUTH);
add(new JScrollPane(jTable), BorderLayout.CENTER);
jtfFilter.getDocument().addDocumentListener(new DocumentListener(){
@Override
public void changedUpdate(DocumentEvent arg0) {}
@Override
public void insertUpdate(DocumentEvent arg0) {
String text = jtfFilter.getText();
if (text.trim().length() == 0) {
rowSorter.setRowFilter(null);
} else {
rowSorter.setRowFilter(RowFilter.regexFilter(text));
}
}
@Override
public void removeUpdate(DocumentEvent arg0) {
String text = jtfFilter.getText();
if (text.trim().length() == 0) {
rowSorter.setRowFilter(null);
} else {
rowSorter.setRowFilter(RowFilter.regexFilter(text));
}
}
});
}
}