Java SE (Java Platform, Standard Edition)

Hi all

I'm trying to decide what would be the best Swing component to take input of a length of time. Ideally I'd prefer to avoid having the user type in a formatted number (hh:mm:ss for example) that has to be validated and just have a component that will only show/allow valid input. I had envisaged using a JSpinner component, starting at "00:00:00" and letting the user 'spin' up to a number of hours, minutes and seconds. In fact the JSpinner would be ideal if I could work out how to get it to correctly display and modify this kind of value as opposed to date values. At the moment I have a JSpinner set up using a DateModel and DateEditor and initialised with a blank date. This works in that I can ignore all but the time values in the date object so the user can just define an amount of time 'since midnight' which I can effectively treat as the interval length. The trouble is that using a Date-configured spinner displays the time in a 12-hour range from 12:00:00, to 01:59:59, at no point does the display tick to 00:00:00 which, for my purposes, is what the user should start with as a value. So, to enter a time interval of, say, 30 minutes and 20 seconds, I currently have to set the spinner to 12:30:20, given this is 30 minutes and 20 second since midnight.

Ideally a time interval shouldn't be tied to a date object at all but if necessary, just a way of pursuading the Spinner to display times between midnight and 1am as starting 00 hours would be a way around the problem. The ideal solution would be a component that acts largely like the Spinner which holds a value behind the scenes as a long in seconds but formats that value into hh:mm:ss seconds for display and also doesn't have the 12 hour or 24 hour range limitation inherent in the Date formatted spinner. I suspect some manipulation of the Model and Editor being used by a JSpinner could achieve this but the Oracle article about JSpinners goes into little or no detail about what a custom editor can do and how etc.

So, does anyone know how I might achieve either of those ends, displaying time in a Date Spinner starting at 0 rather than 12 or customizing a spinner or other component to take a time interval as input.