Selectable alternative to JOptionPane.showMessageDialog

Question

Backgorund info:

I have a buddy of mine in the Navy, and he wanted to know if I could whip him up a small app that would calcualte when he has his guard duty, because apparently counting on a calendar is hard. I used JOptionPane.showMessageDialog to give him the output of the dates. Here's how I'm doing that.

GregorianCalendar knownDate = new GregorianCalendar(year,month,day);

GregorianCalendar[] futureDates = new GregorianCalendar[10];
for(int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
    futureDates[i] = new GregorianCalendar(year,month,day);
    futureDates[i].add(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH,10*(i+1)); // duty every 10 days
}
String newline = System.getProperty("line.separator");
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder("Jakes duty dates:").append(newline);
for(GregorianCalendar d : futureDates) {
    sb.append(months[d.get(Calendar.MONTH)]).append(" ");
    sb.append(d.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH)).append(newline);
}
JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null,sb.toString());

The 'only problem' is you can't select the text that is displayed. He'd like to select it for IM and email, because what's the point in only being half lazy, right? (Only problem is in quotes because I have a feeling he'll scope creep this to death... haha)

My question:

Is there a "one-line solution" to making a selectable showMessageDialog?

Answer 1

I was able to build on trashgod's answer. While he suggested using a JList, I'm instead using a JTextArea (which gives the kind of selection I need.)

Here's what I'm doing:

JTextArea text = new JTextArea(sb.toString());
JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null,text);

And it's working like a charm!

================================================

After a little experimentation I did this:

DefaultListModel model = new DefaultListModel();
for(GregorianCalendar g : futureDates) {
    String m = months[g.get(Calendar.MONTH)];
    String d = String.valueOf(g.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH));
    model.addElement(m + " " + d);
}
JList jlist = new JList(model);

JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null,jlist);

JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null,jlist.getSelectedValue());

And the second box displayed what I had selected on the first one. I was really impressed with that. Now granted, this isn't the functionality I was going for (the top section is) but that doesn't make it any less awesome! :-)