How to set object list to Vaadin 8 combobox

Question

I want to integrate list of complex objects to a Vaadin combobox. I tried it as follows and that shows only garbage values (toString() values). But I want to know how to set the specific attribute which should show in the drop down.

Below class objects should be rendered in the combobox.

public class TestExecution {
private String name;
private String startingTime;
private String endingTime;
private String status;

public String getName() {
    return name;
}

public void setName(String name) {
    this.name = name;
}

public String getStartingTime() {
    return startingTime;
}

public void setStartingTime(String startingTime) {
    this.startingTime = startingTime;
}

public String getEndingTime() {
    return endingTime;
}

public void setEndingTime(String endingTime) {
    this.endingTime = endingTime;
}

public String getStatus() {
    return status;
}

public void setStatus(String status) {
    this.status = status;
}

}

Note: I can't override the toString() method as I will be using it for other purposes.

Answer 1

Firstly, you can give the type of the combo box as follows when creating it.

private ComboBox<TestExecution> comboExecution = new ComboBox<>("Select Execution");

Then you can specify the logic to render the caption of the items of the dropdown by setting a ItemCaptionGenerator.

comboExecution.setItemCaptionGenerator(new ItemCaptionGenerator<TestExecution>() {
        @Override
        public String apply(TestExecution execution) {
            return execution.getName();
        }
    });

You can simplify the code using lamda expressions as follows.

comboExecution.setItemCaptionGenerator(execution -> execution.getName());