Making a JEditorPane with html put correctly formatted text in clipboard

Question

I have this code to demonstrate the problem:

public static void main(String[] args) {
    JFrame frame = new JFrame();
    frame.getContentPane().add(new JEd         


        

Answer 1

After getting no answers, I rolled up my sleeves and did a lot of research and learning. The solution is to make a custom TransferHandler for the component, and massage the HTML text manually. It wasn't easy to work all this out, which could account for the zero answers I got.

Here's a working solution:

import javax.swing.*;
import javax.swing.text.MutableAttributeSet;
import javax.swing.text.html.HTML;
import javax.swing.text.html.HTMLEditorKit;
import javax.swing.text.html.parser.ParserDelegator;
import java.awt.datatransfer.Clipboard;
import java.awt.datatransfer.DataFlavor;
import java.awt.datatransfer.Transferable;
import java.awt.datatransfer.UnsupportedFlavorException;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.Reader;
import java.io.StringReader;
import java.util.ArrayList;

public class ScratchSpace {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        final JFrame frame = new JFrame();
        final JEditorPane pane = new JEditorPane("text/html", "Hello
\u2663
World");
        pane.setTransferHandler(new MyTransferHandler());
        frame.getContentPane().add(pane);
        frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        frame.pack();
        frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
        frame.setVisible(true);
    }

}

class MyTransferHandler extends TransferHandler {

    protected Transferable createTransferable(JComponent c) {
        final JEditorPane pane = (JEditorPane) c;
        final String htmlText = pane.getText();
        final String plainText = extractText(new StringReader(htmlText));
        return new MyTransferable(plainText, htmlText);
    }

    public String extractText(Reader reader) {
        final ArrayList list = new ArrayList();

        HTMLEditorKit.ParserCallback parserCallback = new HTMLEditorKit.ParserCallback() {
            public void handleText(final char[] data, final int pos) {
                list.add(new String(data));
            }

            public void handleStartTag(HTML.Tag tag, MutableAttributeSet attribute, int pos) {
            }

            public void handleEndTag(HTML.Tag t, final int pos) {
            }

            public void handleSimpleTag(HTML.Tag t, MutableAttributeSet a, final int pos) {
                if (t.equals(HTML.Tag.BR)) {
                    list.add("\n");
                }
            }

            public void handleComment(final char[] data, final int pos) {
            }

            public void handleError(final String errMsg, final int pos) {
            }
        };
        try {
            new ParserDelegator().parse(reader, parserCallback, true);
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        String result = "";
        for (String s : list) {
            result += s;
        }
        return result;
    }


    @Override
    public void exportToClipboard(JComponent comp, Clipboard clip, int action) throws IllegalStateException {
        if (action == COPY) {
            clip.setContents(this.createTransferable(comp), null);
        }
    }

    @Override
    public int getSourceActions(JComponent c) {
        return COPY;
    }

}

class MyTransferable implements Transferable {

    private static final DataFlavor[] supportedFlavors;

    static {
        try {
            supportedFlavors = new DataFlavor[]{
                    new DataFlavor("text/html;class=java.lang.String"),
                    new DataFlavor("text/plain;class=java.lang.String")
            };
        } catch (ClassNotFoundException e) {
            throw new ExceptionInInitializerError(e);
        }
    }

    private final String plainData;
    private final String htmlData;

    public MyTransferable(String plainData, String htmlData) {
        this.plainData = plainData;
        this.htmlData = htmlData;
    }

    public DataFlavor[] getTransferDataFlavors() {
        return supportedFlavors;
    }

    public boolean isDataFlavorSupported(DataFlavor flavor) {
        for (DataFlavor supportedFlavor : supportedFlavors) {
            if (supportedFlavor == flavor) {
                return true;
            }
        }
        return false;
    }

    public Object getTransferData(DataFlavor flavor) throws UnsupportedFlavorException, IOException {
        if (flavor.equals(supportedFlavors[0])) {
            return htmlData;
        }
        if (flavor.equals(supportedFlavors[1])) {
            return plainData;
        }
        throw new UnsupportedFlavorException(flavor);
    }
}