Contacts - an address book project
Introduction
A JavaFX-project of a typical address book application. Used to demonstrate JavaFX, GUI design, use of the TableView-component and the mapping of the TableView to the backend register. Also includes example of file handling.
The project was developed for use in teaching in the course "IDATx2001 Programmering 2" at NTNU spring 2020.
Release notes
| Version | Description |
|---|---|
| v0.5.1 | Some minor adjustments: removed synchronized from the iterator()-method of ContactDetails (not needed). Updated the ContactDetails-constructor to make use of the set-methods of the class. |
| v0.5 | Added support for MySQL-DB at IDI (https://mysql-ait.stud.idi.ntnu.no/phpmyadmin/) through a separate persistence unit (PU) in the persistence.xml-file. NOTE: You must set your own username, password and database name. Also support has been added for a locally installed Apache Derby Server. |
| v0.4.3 | Added support for MySQL-DB at IDI (https://mysql-ait.stud.idi.ntnu.no/phpmyadmin/) through a separate persistence unit (PU) in the persistence.xml-file. NOTE: You must set your own username, password and database name. Also support has been added for a locally installed Apache Derby Server. |
| v0.4.1 | Renamed the class AddressBookDAO to AddressBookDBHandler, since DAO is a general term that also could be used for the AddressBookFileHandler. Also altered slightly the use of EntityManager. |
| v0.4 | Added Relational Database support, using the embedded Apache Derby server. For details of the changes made, se below. |
| v0.3 | Adds object serialization of the entire address book. |
| v0.2 | Added import and export from/to CSV-file. A default CSV-file is provided (Addresses.csv) |
| v0.1 | First release with basic add, edit, delete functionality. |
Release v0.4
The following changes were made to enable support for a Relational Database server (using the embedded mode of the Apache Derby RDBMS, using the EclipseLink persistence provider (JPA):
- Added libraries - Added a new folder, called "libs" in the IntelliJ project. Copied the eclipselink.jar and the jakarta.persistence_2.2.3.jar files to the libs-folder for the EclipseLink-JPA support. Added derby.jar to the libs-folder for the Apache Derby embedded support.
- persistence.xml - Added this file (used by the JPA-framework EclipseLink) to a folder named "META-INF", which is the same folder that the MANIFEST.MF should be.
- ContactDetails-class: Added ORM/JPA specific annotations, like @Entity, @Id etc. Also, it must provide a default constructor with no parameters.
- AddressBook - interface: Added an Interface named AddressBook, renamed the exsisting AddressBook to AddressBookPlain. (Used the IntelliJ Refactoring: Extract Interface..)
- Added a new class AddressBookDAO which implements the interface AddressBook. This is the Data Access Object (DAO) providing the interface to the database. The class maps the methods defined in the interface to database actions.
Description of the project
The project is made to demonstrate a typical application with a graphical user interface (GUI) implemented in JavaFX. It's a classic address book example, where you can create contacts to be added to the address book, edit existing contacts, and delete contacts. The project does not make use of FXML and SceneBuilder, but builds the GUI from within the Java code.
JavaFX concepts demonstrated in the project
The project uses JDK 8 for simplicity, since JavaFX was bundled with the JDK up to and including JDK 8. After JDK 8 , JavaFX (and other packages) were moved into modules making it a bit more complex to create JavaFX based applications.
The following JavaFX concepts are demonstrated in this project:
- General JavaFX structure: Stage, Scene, Scenegraph, Nodes etc.
- Event handling, using Lambda
- Menu bar, toolbar, status bar
- Buttons with icons
- MenuItems with icon and keyboard shortcuts.
- TableView for displaying a table, linking the table view to the backend AddressBook without adding JavaFX specific types to neither the AddressBook-class not the ContactDetails-class
- Model-View-Controller: A separate Controller-class has been created performing the typical controller role in a typical MVC setting. The MVC is reflected in the package names in the project. NOTE: we have used "model" as the name of the package containing those classes that makes up the model-type of functionality. In a "real life " industry project, you would never use a single package named model (or even "view" for that matter). The package names should reflect the functionality and services provided by the classes in the package, and not the architecture of the application. In this project, the packages view, model and controllers is used for pedagogical purposes.
- File-handling: Import/Export to CSV text file, in addition to object serialization used to provide persistence between sessions. Whenever the application closes down, the address book is saved to the file "addresses.dat ". Upon startup, the same file is being read to re-create the content of the address book from last session.
Quality control of code and style
The project has used both CheckStyle and the [SonarLint](https://www.sonarlint .org/) plugin to IntelliJ for code quality and coding style. For coding style , the checkstyle checks from Google have been used.