I have never been heavily exposed to programming in Java, though I’m an Android person. I recently began reading online course material about programming in Java, and specifically, programming with the Swing GUI library.
I had a need for a simple application to store information about ICs and other electronic components I have in my possession, so I thought I’d give Java a try! After figuring out Eclipse’s designer windows and GUI editing helpers, I was able to create an application that is usable and backed by a SQLite3 database. My application is cheesily named ‘ICDB’, short for IC Database. I plan on putting the source on GitHub in a little while, and I will post it here as well. Some of the neat features I’ve been able to implement are:
- Search as you type – results come up in the main table as you type a term into the search box
- Application wide key bindings – ctrl-N brings up the ‘New Part’ window, ctrl-M maximizes things, etc.
- Export to Text and CSV
- Add, edit, delete functionality for the database
- Sortable rows in the main table – even after searching, you can sort the subset of items
From my limited experience, I like Java. Some things I miss from C++ like multiple-inheritance, but for the most part I can make do with Interfaces, Abstract classes and the other OOP features.
UPDATE
I have put the source on Github. The pre-built JAR and the dependency JAR is there if you’d like to build it yourself! Documentation is soon to come!
