JTable change cell colors using TableCellRenderer

Question

I am using a JTable in my GUI application as a grid to represent positions for a game. I want the cells of the table that represent a certain position of an object to have a

Answer 1

As an alternative, consider using prepareRenderer(), as suggested by @mKorbel and shown in the article Table Row Rendering.

Answer 2

With JTable, DefaultTableCellRenderer is the best way to do it.

However, if you use JXTable, it'll be much easier to use a Highlighter and a custom Predicate. Generally, Predicates are used to color based on contents of the cell, but you could just as easily have it color based on row/column and some external value.

Look in http://www.jarvana.com/jarvana/view/org/swinglabs/swingx-core/1.6.2/swingx-core-1.6.2-javadoc.jar!/org/jdesktop/swingx/JXTable.html under Rendering and Highlighting, which is a striped table and pattern matching. You'd essentially do the same thing as the pattern highlighter, but with your own Predicate.