http://weblogs.java.net/blog/pkeegan/ en-us 2008-08-30T06:57:09-08:00 http://weblogs.java.net/blog/pkeegan/archive/2008/08/a_personal_data_1.html Today I tackle embedding a database within a Java desktop application. Most of the tutorials I've run across talk about creating applications that connect with a database that is managed from a server. This is appropriate for most business applications. However, sometimes you might want to create a more portable application that carries its own data with it, such as an application in which a user manages personal data. Community: NetBeans pkeegan 2008-08-30T06:57:09-08:00 http://weblogs.java.net/blog/pkeegan/archive/2008/08/im_back_from_va.html In this post, I add Previous Record/Next Record functionality to my recent Customer Records tutorial. My initial intention was to add the buttons to Customer Editor dialog, but I ended up redesigning the UI to remove the modal dialog box. pkeegan 2008-08-07T10:02:04-08:00 http://weblogs.java.net/blog/pkeegan/archive/2008/06/draft_of_custom.html I have published a draft of an extended tutorial on creating desktop Java applications, based on my recent blog posts. The main things that appear in the tutorial that were missing from the blog are currency and date rendering and more customizations of table columns. Community: NetBeans pkeegan 2008-06-24T09:17:49-08:00 http://weblogs.java.net/blog/pkeegan/archive/2008/06/jtable_detail_b.html Another question that has come up in the course of my recent postings is how to bind a combo box selection to a JTable's elements (so that the rows of the table are determined by the selected item of the combo box). Here are some rough steps to mocking up this behavior. pkeegan 2008-06-06T09:39:11-08:00 http://weblogs.java.net/blog/pkeegan/archive/2008/06/using_beans_bin.html Now and again someone will ask me how you can search records in a desktop database app. Here's a reasonably simple way to do so, using mechanisms that exist in Swing and the Beans Binding library. We will create a binding between the rowSorter property of the master table in the example in my previous entries and a text field that I've just added for the search string. For this binding we will need a binding converter so that the table knows how to respond to the search string. Community: NetBeans pkeegan 2008-06-05T10:42:47-08:00 http://weblogs.java.net/blog/pkeegan/archive/2008/05/saving_input_fr.html This is the fourth in a series of posts on creating a Java database application. In my last few posts, I've created a desktop database application by starting with skeleton code generated by the IDE and providing my own customizations, including adding a dialog to use for data entry and binding those fields with a table on the main form. In this post, I finish coding the connection between the dialog and the main form. I'll also add an Edit Client button and its corresponding Action code to the main form. Community: NetBeans pkeegan 2008-05-27T20:33:40-08:00 http://weblogs.java.net/blog/pkeegan/archive/2008/05/binding_jcombob_1.html This is part 3 in a series of posts that I'm doing to show how to use beans binding and JPA to create a Java desktop database application. In this installment, I concentrate on combo boxes, namely how to populate combo boxes from a table and then how to bind the user selection to a record. pkeegan 2008-05-22T19:08:41-08:00 http://weblogs.java.net/blog/pkeegan/archive/2008/05/beans_binding_b_1.html Continuing from my last post, I'll show the next steps in the creation of this simple (but not too simple) client purchase application. This time, our main focus is in creating a separate dialog which we will use for data entry. We'll need to do a few tricks so that input from the dialog is propagated to the main form and then the database. Community: NetBeans pkeegan 2008-05-21T19:45:03-08:00 http://weblogs.java.net/blog/pkeegan/archive/2008/05/input_on_a_new.html Over the next few weeks, I'll be incrementally posting sections of an extended tutorial on creating a Swing desktop application with database connectivity. The tutorial will go beyond simple database connectivity and show things such as one-to-many and many-to-one relationships as well as how to bind database tables to a variety of GUI components. We'll use a MySQL database that has tables for client info, order info, and countries. There will be a one-to-many relationship between the client and order tables. There will be a many-to-one relationship between client and countries tables. Community: NetBeans pkeegan 2008-05-13T09:20:05-08:00 http://weblogs.java.net/blog/pkeegan/archive/2007/12/quickly_enclosi.html In the first comment on my last post, I was asked why there isn't a separate JPanel generated for both the master and detail views in NetBeans' Java Desktop Application template. In the process of trying to answer that question, I learned a thing or two about the Swing Application Framework and was reminded of a very useful trick in the GUI Builder (the ability to generate a container to surround components that have already been added to the form). pkeegan 2007-12-21T13:05:01-08:00 http://weblogs.java.net/blog/pkeegan/archive/2007/12/some_crud_maste.html How do you use the Java Desktop Application project template in NetBeans to create a true master/detail view based on multiple tables with foreign key dependencies? Here's a simple example. pkeegan 2007-12-19T12:50:53-08:00 http://weblogs.java.net/blog/pkeegan/archive/2007/11/beans_binding_c.html The most recent NetBeans daily build has a new sample project that includes custom converters and validators. Keep reading for more detail. pkeegan 2007-11-02T05:18:53-08:00 http://weblogs.java.net/blog/pkeegan/archive/2007/10/binding_jcombob.html pkeegan 2007-10-26T02:58:19-08:00 http://weblogs.java.net/blog/pkeegan/archive/2007/10/binding_ui_elem_1.html Recently I've been working on help for NetBeans support for the new beans binding spec (JSR-295). Much of the excitement around beans binding is that it greatly simplifies data binding in Java desktop apps. But there is also the question of how beans binding simplifies general UI programming. pkeegan 2007-10-25T03:40:48-08:00 http://weblogs.java.net/blog/pkeegan/archive/2007/10/beans_binding_i.html New article on using beans binding in NetBeans pkeegan 2007-10-23T02:13:11-08:00