I am doing a Java Messenger for people to chat and I an looking for a way to record the message archives on the user's computer.
I have 2 possibilities in my mind :
To Save the conversations in XML files that I store in my documents folder.
To use SQlite, but the problem is that I don't know how it is possible to integrate it to my setup package and I don't know if it is very useful.
What would be the best solution for you ?
Thank you
Another option is using JavaDb, which comes for free with Java 6 (and later versions)
Before you make a choice, you should think about questions such as:
presumably you want this transparent to the user (i.e. no admin involved)
is performance an issue ?
what happens if the storage schema needs migration
do you need transactionality (unlikely, I suspect)
etc. It's quite possible that even a simple text file would suffice. Perhaps your best bet is to choose a simple solution (e.g. a text file) and implement that, and see how far it takes you. However, provide a suitable persistence level abstraction such that you can slot in a different solution in the future with minimal disruption.
I would go for the XML files as they are more generic and could be opened outside your messenger with more or less human readable format. I use Pidgin for instant messaging and it saves chat history in XML. Also to read the history from your application you can transform then easily in HTML to display it nicely.
If you use JAXB, converting Java objects to/from XML is very easy. You just put a few annotations on your classes, and run them through a JAXB marshaller/unmarshaller. See http://docs.oracle.com/javaee/5/tutorial/doc/bnbay.html
Use google's protocolbuffer or 10gen's bson. they are much smaller and faster.
http://code.google.com/apis/protocolbuffers/docs/javatutorial.html
http://bsonspec.org/
One issue is these are in the binary presentation and you might want to make the archive transparent/readable to users
Related
I am working on IBM RTC and I need to import a .csv file to RTC using JAVA. Is there a way to do this? If yes, can someone help me with the same.
Parsing CSV data is something that you definitely do not want to implement yourself, there are plenty of libraries for that (see here).
RTC offers a wide range of APIs that can be used with, see:
rsjazz.wordpress.com or
jazz.net
In that sense: you can write Java code that reads CSV data, and RTC has a rich API that allows you push "content" into the system.
But a word of warning: I used that java API some years ago to manipulate information within our RTC instance. That was a very painful experience. I found the APIs to be badly documented and extremely hard to use. It took me several days to come to working code that would make just a few small updates to our stories/tasks.
Maybe things have improved since then, but be prepared for, as said ... a painful experience.
EDIT, regarding your comment on "other options":
Well, I dont see them: you want to push data you have in CSV into your RTC instance. So, if you still want to do that, you have to use that means that are available to you! And don't let my words discourage you. A) it was some time back when I did my programming with RTC, so maybe their APIs are better structured and more intuitive today. B) there is some documentation out there (for example here). And I think everybody can register at jazz.net; so when you have further, specific questions, you might find "better" answers there!
All I wanted to say was: I know that other products such as jenkins or sonarqube have great APIs; and you work with that, all nice, easy, fun. You get things working with RTC, too. Just the path there, maybe isnt that nice and easy.
My personal recommendation: start with the RTC part first. Meaning: just try to write a small programm that authenticates against the server; and then push some example data into the system. If that works nicely for you; then spend the time on pulling / transforming the real data that you have in mind!
What is the best way to log data of a Java (also using JavaFX) application for later reviewing? A few other people and I are working on a project, with a client/server model, and we want to log all data in the server for reviewing it later and possibly use it for calculations (later).
So a simple text file won't do, because the data needs to be reviewed in a clear way and can be used for later calculations. You can say that we want a small database that integrates well with Java, but using one like MySQL will require all the server setup and it seems to cumbersome in this situation.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Probably the best option right now is to use slf4j as the API, and logback as the implementation.
That'll allow you to change the physical repository of your log data, without changing your code.
I also suggest you to read this article:
http://glauche.de/2009/09/09/java-util-logging-vs-slf4j/
The JDK commes with the java.util.logging package. This gives you all you need for logging.
What is the best way to design an UI for generating an XML?
In our case, it is possible for the XML generated to have small number of attributes,but this is not certain. The XML file may grow to accommodate business conditions.
What is the best way to design such a screen. I am thinking of 2 approaches
1. Design a spread sheet which generates xml. Keep the excel as a download
link,ask the user to download it and generate the xml . (I have
seen this approach in a couple of web applications in internet)
[Will this work in a non-windows based OS'].
2. Start designing the UI the normal way(like providing a bunch a textboxes)
[Is this way even possible ?]
Are there any other approaches?
Take option 2 (which might be the same as option 1).
Design a user interface optimised for allowing users to edit and view the data.
Don't optimise the user interface for the data transport/storage mechanism you are using.
Will (using Excel) work in a non-windows based OS?
Yes, so long as the end user has Excel or a spreadsheet with a compatible macro language. If you are targeting the public, then I wouldn't bet on this being the case and would suggest a webbased UI instead.
I am software written in Java which read an external XML file (let's call it "datasource.xml").
This file contains different information and this information are extracted using XPath queries.
The fact is that, according to what kind of information is extracted from that file (datasource.xml) a different work flow is needed. At the moment workflows are "hard coded" in my Java classes but I want to make my software indipedent so that it can work with any datasource.xml, no matter of its structure. But of course I have to specify somewhere how to deal with the extracted data. I was thinking to use (again) JAXB and specify inside the XML file (and from its XSD I will create JAXB classes) the kind of workflow is needed.
Could it be a good solution??
Thanks
have you checked out Drools (a project from JBoss) very easy to learn & is an excellent workflow tool.
building your own workflow engine is quite complex & there are a lot of considerations to be taken into account.
You can think of using activiti, Another workflow solution. It has APIs available and can be used as a workflow service layer in your application.
Like others, I think you will be better off using a higher-level tool for this rather than hand-coding the logic in Java. Take a look at XProc (for example the Calabash implementation), or Orbeon, or Cocoon. They all have a learning curve associated with them, but once mastered, you will have a much more flexible architecture than with hard-coded Java logic.
I am planning to build a simple document management system. Preferably built around the java platform. Are there are best practices around this? The requirements are :
Ability to upload documents
Ability to Tag documents
Version the documents
Comment on documents
There are a couple of options that I am currently considering. The first option would be a simple API on top of SVN or CVS and use a DB backend to track tags, uploader, comments etc
Another option is to use the filesystem. Version the documents as copies in a versions folder and work with filenames.
Or, if there is an Open non GPL'ed doc management system, we could customize it to our needs and package it in our application. Does anybody have any experience building something like this?
You may want to take a look at Content repository API for Java and the several implementations (some of them free).
Take a look at the many Document Oriented Database systems out there. I can't speak about MongoDB or any of the others, but my experience with Couchdb has been fantastic.
http://couchdb.apache.org/
best part of it is that you communicate with it via a REST protocol.
The best way is to reuse the efforts of others. This particular wheel has been invented quite a bit of times.
Who will use this and for what purpose?