Adding items to a JComboBox

Wrap the values in a class and override the toString() method.

class ComboItem
{
    private String key;
    private String value;

    public ComboItem(String key, String value)
    {
        this.key = key;
        this.value = value;
    }

    @Override
    public String toString()
    {
        return key;
    }

    public String getKey()
    {
        return key;
    }

    public String getValue()
    {
        return value;
    }
}

Add the ComboItem to your comboBox.

comboBox.addItem(new ComboItem("Visible String 1", "Value 1"));
comboBox.addItem(new ComboItem("Visible String 2", "Value 2"));
comboBox.addItem(new ComboItem("Visible String 3", "Value 3"));

Whenever you get the selected item.

Object item = comboBox.getSelectedItem();
String value = ((ComboItem)item).getValue();