Jeff’s Junks

I found a good number of bugs in my code. Mostly they were things that I didn’t handle. For instance, I would have something return a null value that I wouldn’t account for when calling the method. I went back and fixed a lot of the code that was interfering with the TimeCardTableModel.

As of now, you can checkout my project and run the class EditPanel to see the JTable with the TimeCardTableModel displaying properly. Also the box will highlight red if the syntax of the data you are entering is incorrect. However, I was only able to get the Integer field for Break time to store the data. This is because of the way Java stores a date and time in one class, but I am keep the two values separate so that I can use a JXDatePicker.

I am thinking of either using a different date and time framework or using a Date/TimePicker, however the latter option seems to require buying a license for many of them, which would mean, if this is open-source, I couldn’t use them. I did research a way of using a JSpinner to account for the time, but I would need to figure out how to store two cells to the same Date object, one part being the date and the other being the time. I read that using a JXTable may cause problems because it resets the time to be midnight whenever someone changes the date.

I spent about 5 hours debugging and 2 hours researching.

So this week I have been working on making a TableModel for my TimeCard window. In doing so I found bugs in some of my domain level code.

I spent an hour and a half fixing some bugs in my WorkDay, WorkPeriod, and TimePeriod classes. I also added a variable for holding on to break time in the WorkPeriod class.

I spent 3 hours working on my TimeCardTableModel class which extends the AbstractTableModel class. At first when I made a JTable with both the TimeCardTableModel and a DefaultTableColumnModel, the component appeared to be blank. When I only used the TimeCardTableModel, it threw a lot of Exceptions. I have been working on fixing these problems, but it isn’t working yet.

Most of this week has been about researching and learning how to use JTables, which I think will be very important because most of QuickBooks is using JTables. I have spent several hours reading about and testing different ways to create JTables.

I don’t have anything pretty done yet that you can look at from the CVS.

To get my project from CVS on to the Eclipse IDE:

1. Download Eclipse IDE
   1. Go to the Eclipse Java EE IDE download page
   2. Install Eclipse
2. Import project(s)
   1. Open Eclipse and choose a project folder to import into
   2. Click on File > New Project…
   3. In the window that pops up, click on CVS Project from CVS, then click Next
   4. On the next window, select “Create new repository location”
   5. Enter in the following information, then click Next
      1. Host = “rosemary.umw.edu”
      2. Repository path = “/home/jmayx9ns/cvsrepository”
      3. User = (Your user name, i.e. “jmayx9ns”)
      4. Password = (Your password)
      5. Connect type = “extssh”
      6. Use default port
   6. On the next page, click “Use an existing module”
   7. Select the projects, “TimeCard” and “PrestoBooks” and click Next
   8. On the next page, there is nothing to change, so just click Next again
   9. Select where you want the projects to go, then click next
   10. On the last page, there is nothing to be changed, so just click Finish

Now that you have my projects on your Eclipse, you can right click on the project name and select Team > Update to get the latest updates on my code. I will post on my blog things that you can run and test.

I spent most of my time getting SwingX to work with eclipse and to be in the CVS repository. I was reading a lot about JTables and how to use them properly, but I am not having good luck with getting those to work properly with the SwingX components. So I worked on making some menus as to what I think would be good to implement.

I haven’t figured out how I am going to do everything yet. I have a good understanding of how I want to implement the timecard part of the program, so I put more menu buttons under it. So far it isn’t functional, but I am just getting the UI to work right now. I spent some time creating some of the basic menus I plan to implement and tried to run it as a JApplet.I am having problems getting the JApplet to work properly, but hopefully I will have it working by the meeting on Wednesday.

I spent 4 hours creating and testing shell commands to compile my javadocs and java files and deploy them along with all the other files I need into my Tomcat folder. I tested it out and now the javadocs link on my page should work.

I spent a couple hours testing JTables and reading about TableModels and TableColumnRenderers, so that I can finish the GUI for my TimeCard portion of the program.

The Applet link is still not working. Even worse it is locking up my browser so I can’t use it after I open that page. I keep getting a ClassNotFoundException, but I put the class in the same folder. Hopefully I can figure out why it is doing this. If not, I can just show my UI at our meeting on my laptop.

So this week I set up a webpage that I will probably add and edit too as this project’s home page. The page is at http://rosemary.umw.edu:12330/prestobooks/home.jsp. I posted some uml diagrams and api specifications. Both are lacking in a good amount of information. I plan to update these sometime soon.

I managed to get a basic GUI unit, called an EntryField. It contains a container that holds a JLabel for a label, JComponent for field input, and a EntryFieldLayout, an object that organizes and lays out the EntryField. I may make this layout an Observer pattern so that when the user switches the GUI they wish to use, all the objects that the layout observed can know to update themselves.

I want to create a DatePicker tool that can be used in a DateEntryField. This would come in handy since I will use it many times throughout the program. I looked online for some open-source code for one that was easy to use. I found a library called swingx, which contains source code for cool GUI tools that are released under the GNU LGPL. I will see if I can implement this code for my project while abiding by the license.

I wanted to set up the Applet portion of the page, however I need to finish coding some of my basic GUI tools I am creating, before testing the GUI can be worthwhile to me.