A short introduction to Java programming

by Sebastian Bologescu

Hi to all of you!

Whatever you do … intranet applications, commercial presentation or only your home page, it is very important to have an impeccable presentation, that means some special buttons, help, dynamic pictures, some animations and sounds. You can do all of this and much more with Java applets and/or JavaScripts

My name is Sebastian Bologescu and I think it is a good idea to give you some useful hints which can make you become interested in Java programming.

First of all I’ll introduce myself:
I am 24 years old, and I just finished Computer Science Dept. of University “Poitehnica” here in Bucharest. Between 15 nov 1997 and 1 June 1999, I worked for Media Pro International, the largest television company from Romania. Currenly I am working with Techdomain, as a member of their IT consulting group. Using my knowledge I implemented a system for news acquisition from four news agencies via sattelite. But this will be another subject about ASP programming.
If you want to know more about me, please look here for my
CV.
ATTENTION!!!
If you are a company and you want to develop some in-house project don’t hesitate to contact Techdomain team!!!

A short introduction to Java programming

Whatever you do … intranet applications, commercial presentation or only your home page, it is very important to have an impeccable presentation, that means some special buttons, help, dynamic pictures, some animations and sounds. You can do all of this and much more with Java applets and/or JavaScripts.

Definition:

Java applets: a small piece of executable code
(compiled)which is downloaded from HTTP server to
your web client and is executed through your Virtual Java
Machine.

Virtual Java Machine: a
software emulated processor which knows to execute your
applet in context with your browser.

Java Scripts:
interpretable code (script) which doesn’t need to be compiled. This
script is interpreted by the browser during run-time.

Java applications: something
like applets, but is browser independent (different window,
different menus etc.).

Methods: this is the name for functions from a
class – it is like behaviour of an object

Members: the variables from a class or
method – is like a properties of an object

What do I need for Java
programming?

First off all you need a
computer! After that you must buy a Java Compiler. For this I
recommend you Visual J++ from Microsoft or Symantec Cafe from
Symantec (very optimized code).

Java programming

The code is very similar to C++.
The operators and the statements are all the same. The difference is
that, in Java you don’t declare prototypes. The source file has
*.java extension and executable file has *.class extension.

From my view, the best
way to learn Java is to take a concrete problem to resolve.

Let’s go to do this
applet:   

As you see, you can draw two types of elements (strings)
selecting it with a button. It is a simple and useless applet but it
is important in educational sense.

This is the sample code:

CFirst.java

For Java compiler I used Symantec Cafe 1.5.

Java is an object oriented language, that means the secret in
doing good code is to understand, and to know the structure of
classes. For that I suggest to look in Symantec Cafe at
browse tag to see this structure, or
consult java documentation from any java compiler. I can’t describe
all this structure from Symantec Cafe here becouse I’ll need all the
harddisk space from swynk.com!!! 🙂

First thing we must do is to declare the libraries we use in our
applet.

In this case we have to include java.awt.*; and
java.applet.Applet. That means we will make
accessible for us all classes from java.awt (used for layout manager
to handle events and so on …) and Applet class. Applet is the
class from where we derive our own class (in this case, CFirst).

After that we will define our new class (CFirst). That class is
derived from Applet, that means all methods and members of Applet
are available to us. The new class declaration is:

public class CFirst extends Applet

{

// class personalize (override methods, add new
members etc…)

}

All we need to do right now, is to personalize some of
that methods overriding them.
I will declare some members
(variables):

int xb=0, yb=0; – integer variables needed to store the
last mouse cursor position in rectangular coordinates

String txt=””; – string variable used to set the text we
display (in this case ‘Computer’ or ‘Server’)

Button b1, b2; – two objects from Button class.

We need to put two buttons so we’ll override the init() method.
Why init() method? Because that method is the entry point in our
programm when applet is executed (initialized).
The declaration
for init() member is:

public void init() – is a public method (can be accesed
from outside) and don’t have return or parameters (very similar to
C++).

Here we will initialize the b1 and b2 object. We do this
using Button(String label )  – the constructor for
class Button. Label parameter define the label for the button and is
of string type.
After that we display our new defined buttons
(b1, b2) with …

add(b1); – add first button, something like this ….
and …

add(b2); – add first button, something like this …. but
as you see when we click on it nothing happens!!!

So we are finished with initialization part.

Now we need to see when a button is clicked. For this we have a
lot of methods in class Applet which can handle this kind of
events:

public boolean action(Event e, Object arg) – this method
return a boolean value and have two parameters.

Event e – the event which happens

Object arg – the arguments associated with event.

When an event appears, the Windows send a message to our applet.
In this case the method action is called.
Depending on the button pressed, we will set the txt
variable with the coresponding string.
In the same way we’ll use
“mouse drag” and “mouse up” events which are other methods treating
mouse events.
At mouse drag, we need to move the text on the
screen. We override the last position with background color
(lightGray) and draw it on new position with blue.
At “mouse up”
event, I reset the xb and yb coordinates, so that the text will not
be erased on next mouse drag.
To put the applet in your .html or
.asp page you need to write the following tag:

That’s all folks! …

… But OOOPS, we have some problems!!! Try to move or
minimize-maximize the window with your applet. As you can see all
you draw in applet’s window dissapear. This is normal, because when
Windows refresh our window reset it, so we loose all. To preserve
the text we need to redraw it after refresh.