Command Oriented Personal Information Manager

Due Date: 2/24/03
Electronic Submission Only!

This assignment involves the creation of simple Personal Information Management system that can deal with 4 kinds of items: todo items, notes, appointments and contacts. Each of these kinds of items is described in more detail below. The assignment requires that you create a class for each item type, and that each class extends an abstract base class provided for you. In addition to creating the four classes, you need to create a manager class that supports some simple text-based commands for creating and managing items.

Each of your 4 item type classes will be derived from the following abstract class:

public abstract class PIMEntity {
    String Priority; // every kind of item has a priority

    // default constructor sets priority to "normal"
    PIMEntity() {
        Priority = "normal";
    }

    // priority can be established via this constructor.
    PIMEntity(String priority) {
        Priority =  priority;
    }

    // accessor method for getting the priority string
    public String getPriority() {
        return Priority;
    }
    // method that changes the priority string
    public void setPriority(String p) {
        Priority = p;
    }

    // Each PIMEntity needs to be able to set all state information
    // (fields) from a single text string.
    abstract public void fromString(String s);

    // This is actually already defined by the super class
    // Object, but redefined here as abstract to make sure
    // that derived classes actually implement it
    abstract public String toString();
}

Todo items must be PIMEntites defined in a class named PIMTodo. Each todo item must have a priority (a string), a date and a string that contains the actual text of the todo item.

Note items must be PIMEntites defined in a class named PIMNote. Each note item must have a priority (a string), and a string that contains the actual text of the note.

Appointment items must be PIMEntites defined in a class named PIMAppointment. Each appointment must have a priority (a string), a date and a description (a string).

Contact items must be PIMEntites defined in a class named PIMContact. Each contact item must have a priority (a string), and strings for each of the following: first name, last name, email address.

There is one additional requirement on the implementation of the 4 item classes listed above, the 2 classes that involve a date must share an interface that you define. You must formally create this interface and have both PIMAppointment and PIMTodo implement this interface.

You must also create a class named PIMManager that includes a main and provides some way of creating and managing items (from the terminal). You must support the following commands (functionality):

• List: print a list of all PIM items
• Create: add a new item
• Save: save the entire list of items (to a file)
• Load: read a list of items from a file

When creating a new item it is expected that the user must response to a sequence of prompts to enter the appropriate information (and even to indicate what kind of item is being created). Do this any way you want, just make sure that your system provides enough information (instructions) so that we can use your systems!

There is no required format for the user interface, anything that allows users to create, list, save and load is fine. Here is what it might look like (user input shown in red):

java PIMManager Welcome to PIM. ---Enter a command (suported commands are List Create Save Load Quit)--- List There are 0 items. ---Enter a command (suported commands are List Create Save Load Quit)--- Create Enter an item type ( todo, note, contact or appointment ) todo Enter date for todo item: 2/24/02 Enter todo text: Submit java homework. Enter todo priority: urgent ---Enter a command (suported commands are List Create Save Load Quit)--- List There are 1 items. Item 1: TODO urgent 02/24/2002 Submit Java homework. ---Enter a command (suported commands are List Create Save Load Quit)--- Save Items have been saved. ---Enter a command (suported commands are List Create Save Load Quit)--- Quit

Note that there is not a required Delete command. Feel free to use any data structure you want to hold a list of items, you are allowed to use a simple array with size 100 (you are not required to support lists of more than 100 items). We will talk about the various kinds of collection objects supported by java.util (but you don't need to use them for this assignment).

File I/O: you need to be able to save a list of items to a file (and to read from a file). You can use a simple text file and the PIMEntity methods toString() and fromString() to generate/parse strings, or you can get fancy and create Serializable objects and use Object streams (which we have not yet covered).

Submission of your homework is via email, the general idea is to send an email message with your files as attachments. There is an automated email submission system that will respond to your submission right away, so you will have a record that we got your files. For HW3 you should submit your .java files.

All projects must be submitted via email to javaprog-submit@cs.rpi.edu. The subject line of the submission message should contain a single number '3' indicating the HW number. The body of your message should include your full name (and anything else you want to tell us). Make sure your email message includes your full name, we can't record your grade unless we know your name (and the email address joe222@yahoo.com doesn't mean anything to us!).

Don't send compiled code (class files)!

You can expect a return email indicating receipt of your project submission immediately. This receipt will include a list of all the files that were successfully extracted by the submission script - please look over the receipt carefully to make sure your submission worked.

Multiple Submissions: You can resubmit up to 10 times for each project, we will always grade the last submission received unless you tell us otherwise.