Java – monitor changes to collections

Suppose you have the following Java beans:

public class MyBean
{
    private List<String> names = new ArrayList<String>();

    public void addName(String name)
    {
        names.add(name);
        fireNamesPropertyChange(name);
    }
}

How do you usually implement property change events for collections? Do you try to use index properties, which seem to be more for arrays than collections?

Solution

Look at the glazed lists library, which supports observable collections

If I do this myself, I may create a custom listener interface that includes elementsadded, elementsremoved methods or similar: -) (also depending on my needs)