University of Stirling

Computing Science and Mathematics

CSCU9A2 (CORE) Java assignment Autumn 2020
A simple interactive address book
Deadline: 21 November, 5.00 pm Worth: 40% of final mark
This description and the starter code can be found on the module Canvas pages.
Please read this document right through before
starting your work.
Introduction
In this assignment you will be completing a Java program that
runs a very simple interactive contacts address book – as in the
example shown to the right: The program holds the address
and other details for a collection of contacts. One contact is
always displayed (unless the address book is empty), and the
navigation buttons at the top can be used in a conventional
way to step back and forth amongst the contacts – these
aspects of the program are complete. In the lower half of the
window there are buttons and text fields for more advanced
functions for managing the address book – it is the methods
and algorithms that implement these functions behind the
scene that you are required to complete.
You are given an almost-complete Java program,
AddressBook.java, on the Canvas Assignment page. You
must take your own copy of this program to work on in a BlueJ
project in the usual way.
 The user interface and event handling are fully complete and correct, and you must not
change them.
 Behind the scene, inside the program, the address book is held in a collection of arrays –
again the arrays are complete, and you must not change their declarations.
 The event handlers for the advanced function buttons call seven different methods whose
purpose is to access or update the data held in the arrays (for example to delete the
currently selected contact). These methods are present in the code but are incomplete, and
it is your task to complete as many of them as you can: to function correctly, and in good
programming style. The method headers for these methods must not be changed (as they
are called from the event handlers), but you may add further helper methods if you wish.
Your submission for the assignment should complete as many of the incomplete methods as
possible — you do not need to complete all of them in order to get credit. The seven methods
contribute up to the following number of marks each to the overall mark for the assignment:
addContact 10 deleteContact 10
clearContacts 10
findContact 20 findPartial 10
sortAtoZ 30 sortZtoA 10

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 Your solution for each of the seven methods will be assessed according to the following criteria
(based on the University’s Common Marking Scheme):
Mark range Criteria
70-100 (1st) Fully correct results in all situations; well coded, with well
chosen identifiers and comments
60-69 (Upper 2nd) More or less fully correct results; perhaps with occasional
faults; competent coding and comments
50-59 (Lower 2nd) More or less fully correct results; perhaps with occasional
faults
40-49 (3rd) Partial attempt that mostly works correctly
30-39 (Marginal Fail) Partial attempt with substantial faults in the results
0-29 (Clear Fail) Little or nothing attempted

In judging whether the Java code that you have written is of “high quality” we shall take into
account the following Assessment criteria:
 correctness of operation,
 appropriate use of Java constructs,
 suitably informative choices of variable and method names,
 consistency, legibility and tidiness of program layout,
 effective use of comment text.

Independent work
Note that we require that the work you submit is your own, independent work. “Plagiarism”
means presenting the work of others as your own. The University takes a very serious view
of plagiarism, and the penalties can be severe. The University has a formal policy on
plagiarism which can be found at
http://stir.ac.uk/1x0
However, this should not exclude discussion of general issues. Please read the “Note on
Independent Work” available via the CSCU9A2 Canvas assignment page. Be warned: copying
or borrowing code does not necessarily guarantee a quality product, and may damage your
grade, as may showing or giving your code to someone else! We will be submitting all the
solutions to a “similarity” checking service, and any apparent cases of collusion will be
investigated carefully, and the appropriate penalties applied.

General description of the problem

The address book program contains a ‘database’ of your contacts: names, addresses and other
details — the database is quite small in this version, but in principle it could be quite large. Of
course, in this exercise, the ‘database’ will be a little unrealistic: the information is built-in to the
program (whereas in a ‘serious’ system it would, perhaps, be read in from a file or held in a proper
database). The database inside the program is a parallel collection of arrays of Strings: one array
for the names, one array for the addresses, and so on. The strings in the elements at positions
with index 0 of each array comprise the information about one contact, the strings in elements at
positions with index 1 comprise the information about another contact, and so on. There is a
single variable, currentSize, that holds the number of contact details currently held in the
database, and a single variable, currentContact, that holds the index of the currently
selected contact (or -1 if there are no contacts).
User interface buttons are provided to allow the user:

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  to navigate forwards and backwards through the entries in the address book
 to add a new contact
 to delete the current, or all contacts
 to search for a contact by exact name match
 to search for a contact by case insensitive match to any part of a name
 to re-order the contacts in ascending name order
 to re-order the contacts in descending name order
The navigation buttons function correctly.
The add new contact button almost functions correctly – it does not detect when the user is
attempting to add another contact to a full database. This is because the method called by the
button’s event handler is incomplete.
The other six buttons do not work: The user interface code for them is fine, but it calls core
data processing methods to carry out the necessary accesses/updates to the data in the arrays,
and those methods require completing. The incomplete methods are listed in the table at the
foot of page 1. You will find them in the code below line 445 (see ///////////////////////////).
You should insert your student number in place of 1234567 in line 117.
All other work is on the seven method bodies: You must complete the addContact
method, and implement full method bodies for deleteContact, clearContacts,
findContact, findPartial, sortAtoZ and sortZtoA.
Note: You MUST NOT alter any other parts of the program:
 the GUI parts are complete and correct
 the array declarations are complete and correct
 the method headers are complete and correct.

Advice — Incremental Development

Be very wary of tackling programming using the “Big Bang” approach: don't try to create the
entire final program before entering it and testing out your ideas. That way lies frustration and
poor progress.
We advise that you develop programs one step at a time – in this assignment perhaps one
method at a time. At each step you can design and enter a little bit more of the final program. Of
course, when you run the program at each step it won't do everything that the final program is
supposed to, but you can check that the design so far is functioning correctly. [Further, if you run
out of time doing the assignment, then you can submit your most recent correctly functioning
version, confident that it does something properly — a large but non-functioning program is hard
to give credit for.] This is an important technique in developing big programs: we can build a
complete, compilable and runnable program without having designed all the details.
The incremental development approach is valuable for various reasons: If you have a working
version of the program and you add only a little new code at a time, when something turns out to
be faulty then it should be fairly clear where to look for the fault! (Clearly, if you have just typed
in 100 lines of Java and it doesn't work, then locating the fault might be like looking for a needle in
the proverbial haystack!) It is also very reassuring to see some facilities coming “on-line” at an
early stage — rather than working to complete the whole program before trying it out! Good
psychology and good methodology.

Keeping backups of your work

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 We very strongly recommend that you make backup copies of your work from time to time —
perhaps after each successfully completed development step, or more frequently such as every
day. It is easy to do this: Find the folder containing your project folder, click once on the icon
for your project folder to highlight it, select Copy from the Organize menu (or right-click, Copy),
and then select Paste from the Organize menu. You will see a new folder appear called Copy
of ... (or Copy (2)..., etc for subsequent copies). If you ever need to backtrack, you can just
copy your .java file from the most recent Copy... folder to the main project folder. I suggest
that you treat the Copy ... folders as your safe archive — leave them alone and continue your
work in your main project folder.
Keeping regular print-outs of your work can also be a life saver.
In past years a number of students have found themselves in extremely distressing
circumstances as a result of ignoring the advice above.
Please remember that computers and related devices are not perfectly reliable, and people do
make mistakes, so simple precautions are appropriate. If you carry out this assignment work on
your own computer, remember to keep backups on removable disks, pen drives or in the cloud,
but do not keep your only copy of your work on removable disks or pen drives.

Submission instructions
You must submit your assignment work through Canvas: You should submit exactly one file,
your final version of AddressBook.java, through the assignment submission link on the
CSCU9A2 assignment page before the deadline stated above. [Note that this is not a Turnitin
submission, as it does not deal with code, and so there will be no originality report.]
We will compile and test your applications, so you must make sure that what you submit
compiles without errors — we are not going to correct errors nor delete incomplete code in order
to see if anything works properly! You can delete or comment out incomplete code before
submitting your application (check that it does then compile). [If you submit an application that
doesn’t compile, then we will do our best to award some credit for what we can see in the Java
text, but you are unlikely to be awarded a mark higher than 40.]
Anonymous marking: You are required above to include your student number in a
String in the main method, but you must not include your name nor your username.
Extensions and non-submission
If you need an extension for a good reason (perhaps for medical reasons) then this can be
arranged, but it must be applied for via the Extension Request link in the module’s navigation
menu on Canvas as soon as possible after the problem becomes known.
In accordance with University policy, assessed coursework submitted late will be accepted up to
seven days after the submission date (or expiry of any agreed extension) but the mark will be
lowered by three marks per day or part thereof. After seven days the piece of work will be
deemed a non-submission, the student will have failed to meet module requirements, and this will
result in the award of No Grade for the module as a whole.

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