Do I need a database for my game? - java

I will develop a game in java which is about chemistry experiments that include quizzes and lessons . I need to store only two things in my game which is
Score of the quiz
the experiments that the user finished in order to put some sign or change color or whatever to indicate that this one you have already finished it in the experiments menu
Do I need a database ? I read about XML and it used to store simple things . But as I far as I know that XML work with web and my game is offline, how am I going to use it in my case ?
Also , someone told that I can use simple text-based format . But how ?

If you're not planning on making the game online, then you don't 'need' to use a database. You can use an XML (which can be used offline as well as online), or you can use SQLite.
On the text based format thing, it might seem easier to use, but it will cause you trouble on the long run. My suggestion would be to go with XML.
You can learn about XML here as well as how to parse them.

XML should work fine and would probably be my approach to this problem. It's not tied specifically to the web. It's an extensible format for data that has many existing libraries in many different languages including java.
You also have other options like CSV files.
You can use a file-based local database like SQLite but it sounds like overkill for what you've described.

Related

How can I make my java program retrieve data sets online?

Currently I am working on a program that will assist me for making decisions when trying to bet on sports. My goal is for the program is that each day I would like to retrieve things like weather, past games, player/team stats etc. then aggregate it all so that I can see which teams make the most sense to bet on.
I'm not exactly sure if it's even possible to do on IntelliJ, the text editor I'm using, because I do not think its connected to the internet on its own. I think one approach would be to use a separate program (not IntelliJ) to automatically go to each website and copy the appropriate information into an excel document; then I could copy the file into my project each day before I run it. Something like that is what I have in mind, but I would appreciate some help if anyone knows which strategy I could use to move past this obstacle.
I've recently learned how to and created a GUI to navigate my program a little easier than through the console; therefore, my work ethic is not an barrier in this instance. I've taken one programming class in college and would consider myself an apprentice (one step above a novice).
You can use jsoup for scraping data from a website, Then you can use Apache POI to add it to an excel file.
Heres the website https://jsoup.org/
Heres a good tutorial about apache POI https://www.baeldung.com/java-microsoft-excel

Where to place my android app's data

I'm currently developing an app that lets you create and save excercises and routines for the gym. I want the app to come with some example excercises and routines and also to give the user the ability to add his own.
The thing is, I know I can use "getFilesDir()" and save it in the internal memory, but if I do that, how do I put my example files also in the internal memory? I don't think I can do that without creating those files by code everytime the app runs. I've also tried putting the example excercises in "res/raw" but then the ones the user adds go to a different place and I don`t know if that's good practice, apart from just how annoying it is having to read them from different places.
Where would be the best place to put those excercises and routines files?
Thank you very much!
The best practice is to store data inside "Sqlite Database".
"Sqlite Database" is the internal database that android provides to store data locally and is easy to use.
It's queries are easy to implement. It is more easy to work on, if you have worked on any database before. Just create a "Database Helper" class and initiate inside the activity where you plan to store data.
Many big applications like "whatsapp", use this database to store data on user's device.
The plus point of using "Sqlite" is that, you can iterate through each and every data easily.
It is quick, easy to work and is also a good programming practice. It is also secure.
While using a sqlite database for managing your app data is the traditional
approach, there are also alternatives to it. Realm is such an alternative. You can check the comparison with sqlite and see if it meets your need.
https://realm.io/
In Android development, you can store locally and as well as remotely. This link will walk you through all possible ways to store data.
As per your requirement, I would recommend you got for SQLite Database provided especially for android as it is light weight. Sqlite queries are straightforward and easy to use with some APIs comes with the package. you can start with this link with Sqlite.
I suggest using Firebase to store your data. Not only it is online and realtime, it can also work in offline mode and sync later. Because you're developing a gym app, why not give it an online or offline capability? I think users prefer it that way. You can check it at firebase.google.com

what are the steps to make a word search for a website?

I want to write a word search,which connects to a specific website(huge one),takes the word from user,searches the site and returns the strings which contain the word;this should be written in java and as an applet.I have read some tutorials and questions on this,and understood what have to be done is:
1.connect to a website and get the content of a website and save it to a string.(this should be done with a webcrawler which will be made from my own code for connecting to website and save the content to a string + jsoup library to parse the html code).
2.save the datas to a database(in my case nosql database).
3.index the datas in database.
4.query the database to show the results.
5.make a UI for showing the search results(I use swing.japplet).
now my qustions are:
1.have I understood correctly the steps which I have to go?(please explain me in details if a step is unnecessary or necessary)
2.Is it necessary to have a database?
notice:I want to implement it myself,without using ready things such as lucene,nutch,solr,...
edit:3 people told me applet is not suitable for such a thing,so what should be the replacement?
many many thanks for your help.
You should look at using Lucene, as it does most of what you want here.
You should not use applets.
For small data set, database should be sufficient. Databases like mysql comes with full text search functions.
For bigger data set, you might want to consider Lucene or Solr.
That is one way way to implement this. Another (simpler) way would be to use an existing text search / indexing engine like Lucene / Solr. Going to the effort of reimplementing the "text search / indexing" wheel using database technology strikes me as a waste of effort, unless you have a sound technical reason for doing so.
You do need to has some kind of database, because indexing a website on the fly would simply not work. Lucene will handle that.
I think your choice of Java applets to build the UI is a bad idea. There are other technologies that give results that are as good or better ... without the security risk of a Java browser plugin.
Finally, another way to make your website searchable is to get Google to do it for you. Make your website content indexable, and then use Google's search APIs.

Exporting Access Tables Programmatically

alright, after a few hours of searching and reading all over the net, I have broken down and decided to ask for help. I am working to automate many of the more medial and repetitive tasks as work, and stumbled upon AutoIt, I love the tool. anyway, Today's task is the export of a slew of tables and queries from Access 2007 in a few different formats. mostly CSVs some Tab delimited, and a couple of dBase DBFs and DBTs. now none of this is all that difficult and in fact the person who previously held my position created about a hundred Macros in the mdb that export the tables. seems to me that he fell well short of hastening the process as you still have to run each macro. I am looking to create an autoit script that will export the correct tables in the correct format to the correct place with the correct name. doesn't seem like it should be that difficult.
so thus far I have been imagining using ADO to tell Access to export which table in which format and where. but I cannot seem to find the necessary commands needed to do that. I also figured that perhaps, at least with the text based formats (CSV, txt, tab) I could read each record out of a given table or query and then build the text file myself in autoit, not the simplest way of doing it, but it could work. The problem arises when trying to create the dBase file, I haven't a clue where to begin with that.
I am open to using JAVA, AutoIt, PHP, or Perl to accomplish my task.
I should note that I am fairly new to ADO. the syntax in ADO seems to elude me frequently. so, any and all help is appreciated, please refrain from the "Just google it" responses. if you have a link to share, or a resource that you have found helpful please post that as well, I am not allergic to reading or doing research. Sometimes it just makes more sense to ask for help.
Thanks,
Kyle
If you are open to using VBA, you could probably make it work with only a little code and the DoCmd-Object.
To export as CSV, have a look at DoCmd.Transfertext
To export to dBase, have a look at DoCmd.TransferDatabase
If you have questions about using those, just ask in the comments and I will provide more information.
This is a sort of bonkers idea, but if you already know Java, you may be able to get this to work with the JDBC-ODBC bridge. You'll first have to register your particular Access database as a named ODBC data source, as the bridge does not appear to support on-the-fly ODBC. I don't have a Windows machine on hand and don't remember the exact sequence of steps to do that, but it should be available from the ODBC driver manager.

What is the easiest way (framework/library/call) to prevent Cross Site Scripting using Google App Engine (GAE)?

I'd like to store then later display user-entered content securely with minimal effort (my goal is a web app not writing a bunch of security-related code).
EDIT: Google App Engine for Java
I'm working with the same issue myself; but I haven't had the chance to get it out into the real world yet; so please just keep in mind that MY ANSWER IS NOT BATTLE TESTED. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.
First, you need to ask yourself if you're going to be allowing the user to use ANY html markup. So, for example, can the user enter a link? What about make bold text?
If the answer is NO, then it is fairly simple. Here is the idea of how to set the filter up:
http://greatwebguy.com/programming/java/simple-cross-site-scripting-xss-servlet-filter/
But personally, I don't like the filter being used in the first example; I just put it there to show you how to set the filter up.
I would recommend using this filter:
http://xss-html-filter.sourceforge.net/
So basically:
Setup the example from first link, get it working
Download the example from the second link, put it in your project in such a way you can access it from your code.
Rewrite the cleanXSS method to use what you downloaded from the second link. So probably something like:
private String cleanXSS(String value) {
return new HTMLInputFilter().filter( input );
}
If you do want to allow HTML (such as an anchor tag/etc) then it looks like the HTMLInputFilter has mechanisms to allow this; but it isn't documented so you'll have to figure it out by looking at the code yourself or provide your own way of filtering.
user-entered content securely with minimal effort (my goal is a web app not writing a bunch of security-related code).
How much security-related code you need to write depends on how much you are at risk (how likely is it someone would want to attack your site, which it self is related to how popular your site is).
For example if your writing a public notepad, which will have a total of 3 users, you can get away with the bare minimum, if however your writing a we hate China, Iran and all hackers/crackers app dealing with $1,000,000 worth of transactions an hour and 3 billion users, you may be a bit more of a target.
Simply put you shouldn't trust any data that comes from outside your app including from the datastore. All this data should be checked that it's what you expect.
I've not validated incoming Java Strings against XSS however removing HTML is normally good enough, and Jsoup looks interesting for this (See Remove HTML tags from a String )
Also to be sure you should ensure your outputting what you expect to be outputting and not the some JavaScript.
Most templating engines, including django's (which is bundled with App Engine), provide facilities to escape output to make it safe to print in HTML. In newer versions of Django, this is done automatically unless you tell it not to; in 0.9.6 (still the default in webapp), you pass your output values to |escape in the template.
Escaping on output is universally the best way to do this, because it means you have the original unmodified text; if you modify your escaping or output formatting later, you can still format text entered before that.
You can also use a service that will proxy all connections and block any XSS attempts. I know only one service like that - CloudFlare (but it doesn't mean there aren't others like that). Unfortunately security features goes in with Pro plan which is paid :(

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