CIS355A Week 4 Lab—Processing Arrays Of Objects

CIS355A Week 4 Lab—Processing Arrays of Objects

Create a GUI that uses JList and JTabbedPanes. Process multiple objects in an ArrayList. Code event handlers for multiple events. Develop a stock management application to store, view, add, and remove stock purchases.

Paper For Above instruction

The CIS355A Week 4 Lab involves creating a graphical user interface (GUI) application to manage stock purchases using Java Swing components. The primary objectives are to effectively process multiple objects stored in an ArrayList, utilize JList and JTabbedPane for organized UI structure, and implement event handling for user interactions. This comprehensive project emphasizes object-oriented design principles, GUI development, and event-driven programming in Java, leading to a practical stock portfolio management system called Stocks4U.

The core functionality of the application revolves around a Stock class, which encapsulates the details of each stock purchase. This class includes private instance variables such as the company name, number of shares, purchase price, and current price. It provides both default and parameterized constructors for flexible object creation, along with getter and setter methods to access and modify its attributes. An important method in this class calculates the profit or loss, defined as the total gain or loss based on the difference between current and purchase prices multiplied by the number of shares. Additionally, a toString method returns the stock's name for display purposes.

The GUI is designed with two primary tabs using JTabbedPane. The first tab, “Show stocks,” contains a JList which displays all stored stock objects. When the user selects a stock in the list, a label or text field shows the profit or loss for that stock, calculated using the method in the Stock class. The same tab also includes a JButton labeled “Remove” to delete the selected stock from the list. Error messages via JOptionPane inform users of invalid actions, such as attempting to remove a stock when none is selected or when input fields are empty.

The second tab, “Add stock,” features input fields with labels to gather new stock information—company name, number of shares, purchase price, and current price—and a button to add this stock to the list. When clicked, the program validates user input, ensuring, for example, that numeric fields contain valid numbers and that no fields are left blank. If validation passes, a new Stock object is created, added to the ArrayList, and then reflected in the JList display. If input is invalid, an error message appears, prompting correct input.

The application showcases object-oriented programming by encapsulating stock details within the Stock class and maintaining a collection of stock objects in an ArrayList. The interaction between the GUI components and the data structures is handled through event listeners attached to buttons, list selections, and other controls. Selecting a stock from the list updates the displayed profit or loss dynamically, demonstrating effective event handling. Removing stocks updates the list in real-time, maintaining the integrity of the displayed data.

Testing the program involves verifying that stocks can be added correctly, displays update dynamically, calculations of profit or loss are accurate, and stocks can be removed without errors. Test cases include adding valid stocks with different profitability scenarios, attempting to add stocks with invalid input, selecting and removing stocks, and confirming the display updates accordingly. Screen shots of the application's various states validate the functionality according to the specifications.

In conclusion, this lab enhances understanding of managing collections of objects within a GUI environment. Handling multiple classes, event-driven programming, and GUI design are critical skills demonstrated here. Challenges encountered included validating user input robustly and synchronizing data between the ArrayList and GUI components. Reinforcing concepts of encapsulation, user feedback, and dynamic UI updates prepares students for more complex Java applications involving collection processing and sophisticated interfaces.

References

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