I am working on a simple Java applet multiple choice quiz that will display a question with three choices. I am pulling the questions and answers from a text file and want to loop through the questions as the user answers them. So every time the user hits 'Submit' the program will check the answer then update the labels with a new question. My question is how do I get the loop to wait on the answer? Should I put all of the code in the button event handler? I thought about Cardlayout, but it seemed inefficient. I don't really have any code yet; I'm still in the planning stage. Thanks!
I would suggest:
First of all regarding, "My question is how do I get the loop to wait on the answer?", I wouldn't even use a for-loop or any similar loop to solve this.
I would create a non-GUI class to hold each question, the possible answers and the correct answer. Consider calling it Question. It would have a String field for the question itself, a List<String> for possible answers, and either another String for the correct answer, or it could hold an int for the index to the correct answer, or even have the correct answer always be the first one, and be sure to randomize the display of answers.
Create an ArrayList of this class, ArrayList<Question>.
Read in the file all at once, filling your ArrayList.
Give your main GUI class an int index variable for iterating through this ArrayList.
When a submit button is pressed, increment your index and get the next item in the List (if not at the size limit of the List).
Consider creating a JPanel class for displaying each question and the possible answers, perhaps called QuestionPanel.
You can either create one display object and swap out the text of your question JLabel and the text of your JRadioButtons. This works nicely if all questions have the same number of possible answers.
Or you could create multiple QuestionPanels, and swap them via CardLayout.
There's nothing "inefficient" about a CardLayout. I have no idea what you're talking about here. Care to elaborate what is inefficient about it, and just what you mean by the term "inefficient"?
Related
I made an array list of strings and assigned an image to each string. Then, I randomized these images. I want to now make a method that swaps one button to the button adjacent to it, but I have no idea how to do this. Any suggestions about how to go about it? Thanks
First suggestion: Don't. Don't swap JButtons as you're making things much harder than they need to be. Instead if possible swap images or more specifically ImageIcons, and this can be easily done using the JButton method, setIcon(...).
It almost sounds as if you're trying to create a memory game, and if so there are plenty of examples of just this sort of thing to be found on this site, at least one created by me.
As always in these sorts of things, first concentrate on the program's model, that is, its logical underpinnings, and only after getting that working, apply it to the program's view or its GUI representation of the model's state.
If I had a program that had a list of a few links, how could I add another link to the program, without changing the source code itself? I was going to create a "new" button in the corner of the application, that created a new item (I already know how to do this part)
Just as the comment said, if it is a list then you could make it so that when you press the button it calls listname.add("...") and adds it to the list. Just for future reference, when asking questions, try to put as much detail as you can in the question, to help people answer it.
Hey I'm writing a quiz application for android. Some of the questions asked require just true or false, and some you need to pick from 4 possible options. I've implemented an intereface with 4 radiobuttons and got that to work fine.
I was just wondering what the best way would be to adjust the number of radiobuttons depending on the question type? I've added in an extra field in my question object to state the number of possible answer choices, but i'm unsure how to use this in my program. Any pointers would be appreciated!
At the moment i'm using a textswitcher to update the question asked when I click next and was wondering whether I could use an imageswitcher to make the desired change with the radiobuttons?
ADDITIONALLY - I was thinking about how I could update the labels on the radiobuttons to the possible choices instead of simply A, B, C etc. just to make it look nicer.
You can try these 2
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/View.html#setVisibility%28int%29
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/TextView.html#setText%28java.lang.CharSequence%29
I would like to create a quiz for my Java GUI.
I'd like it to display a question on one page, then have a next button which takes the user to another page telling them if that question was correct or not, and if it is correct they can move on to the next question (by clicking another next button) and if they got it wrong, have to go back and answer it again. However I have no clue how to do this!!
So far I have a simple GUI with a welcome page and tabs down the side, one of which includes a quiz. Would it be a better idea to create the quiz in Flash or something and then embed it into my Java application? Or just do the whole thing in Java? I'm really new to java so I'm not at all sure what to do, any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks
It would be best to use just Java. Consider using CardLayout with your GUI to allow swapping questions, or else you can create and modify key components on the fly such as the text displayed by JLabels and JRadioButtons.
Key though before considering any GUI structures is to first create solid OOPS based non GUI classes to handle your questions. For instance, you may want classes for:
Question class that holds a question String, a List of possible answer Strings, a correct answer String. This class can randomly order the incorrect and correct answers, can have a method for checking if the answer selected is correct.
A Test class that holds a collection of questions, that can present questions in random order, that can hold the score obtained.
A QuestionReaderWriter class that can read and write questions to a text file (you definitely do not want to hard-code the question text).
For this type of app it would be best to use the language you are more familiar with.
Since this is just a simple display this then do that there really is nothing very difficult about it.
Personal, I would lean towards Flash as the flash IDE is drag and drop and an experienced flash guru could make this in a few hours. Flash IDE is geared towards this.
Okay, thus may seen kind of odd, but I wanted to get some suggestions from everyone here. I am a beginning Java developer (after 2 years of ASP.NET web development) and I have recently began working on my first Java project - a calculator. I realize that their are tons of calculators out there, but I thought it would be a good beginner project.
Anyway, here is what I need help with. Currently, I am using a Scrolling JTextArea for display (instead of a simple JTextField) that is approximately 5 rows tall. I want the user to be able to scroll through the list to see previous entries and such. The format of the box will be equation on one line and the program will generate the answer on the next and so on.
My real question is, how is the best way to implement this? My fist idea was to read through the JTextArea when equals is pressed, down to the last line and try to search that line for the operator (+, -, etc.) and the operands. Is this the best way to go about this? Although, this would work would work, I think it could get cumbersome and sounds very inefficient. I am open to any suggestions, even possibly replacing the JTextArea is some other component would work better.
Thanks!
There's no need to read through the JTextArea contents - use JTextArea.append() to add to the end. Here are some examples of JTextArea content manipulation:
JTextArea ta = new JTextArea("Initial Text");
// Insert some text at the beginning
int pos = 0;
ta.insert("some text", pos);
// Insert some text after the 5th character
pos = 5;
ta.insert("some text", pos);
// Append some text
ta.append("some text");
// Replace the first 3 characters with some text
int start = 0;
int end = 3;
ta.replaceRange("new text", start, end);
// Delete the first 5 characters
start = 0;
end = 5;
ta.replaceRange(null, start, end);
If you are open to different interfaces, you might want to try something like a JTextField at the top of your view, from which you can receive as input your 'new' inputted equation, and then below it with the same width a JList that would scroll to have all of the previous equations and their results. That would make parsing of the current formula much easier, and you would also have an easy time of keeping your previous formula and their results in a scrollable list, with the easy option of keeping the most recent on top.
your idea is interesting. so you would have a line such as.
2+2
then when pressing calculate would add the line
4
and so on then you could type in another equation.
it could work but as you said it wouldn't be the most efficient implementation... but that's just a tradeoff of getting the desired functionality.
If i were going to implement it the way you discribed (with a JTextArea) I'd use scanner, and scan the value string a line at a time.
if the line has +/- in it then do the calculation and add both the original line and the answer to a string.
the new string is the new value of the text field.
this method would get pretty cumbersom as you would be continually recalculating the users old entries more were added.
I guess if you continually stored the last line of the document, when you run out of lines, calculate the last stored and append the answer, then it wouldn't be so bad.
Here's what I would do:
use a JTextField to enter in the calculations, and a JList to display the old ones and their answers.
You could treat each line as a single operation. That way you could use the String array returned directly by:
String [] operations = textArea.getText().split("\n");
And then you'll know that exactly each one of them as a complete operation ( may be invalid, but that' another story )
Is this what you asked or do I totally misread you?
I think a simpler solution would actually use two components. A TextArea to hold the "history" of what's happened so far, and a textfield where the user inputs new entries.
Thanks to everyone who replied. You all gave me some ideas to think about. I think right now, I am going to go with my original idea of using a single JTextArea and try to find ways to optimize the process. If that gets too difficult (which is very possible), I will follow the majority's advice and use two separate fields. Thanks for replying everyone!