Home | About | Partners | Contact Us | Logout

Welcome to JAssistant

Current version is 1.6.1

The package

The package is named adavid and it has the following sub-packages:

awt : classes that extend the java.awt, or simply new components like TNode, a tree node
io : input/output package, just classes to use output to a string or a text component
reflect : a big package on reflection, to get structured information on classes, these classes use intensively the java.lang.reflect package and they provide easier access and more complete access to class information. A news is the capability to look for the packages so that the user can see all the installed classes.
swing : extensions of the swing components, notably a BToolBar class which has a Toolbar with a BorderedLayout layout, which does not work properly for JToolBar
util : some tools to run like Assistant, JDefaultResource... and useful classes like Sorter to sort whatever you want

Executable programs

adavid.reflect.ClassReflect : gives information on one class, which is constructors, fields, methods. Can find a class even if the name is not complete. This class uses the PackageFinder class which writes information on your home directory to avoid doing the exploration each time. The package exploration is done only when the program notices that the actual packages have changed.
adavid.reflect.JavaFinder : finds source of a class name, needs the complete name. The main() declaration is there just to test the class.
adavid.reflect.PackageFinder : finds all the packages on your system and may give information on one in particular, with the contained classes and extensions of a particular class within this package.
adavid.util.Assistant : a program only. This is not intended to be a class to be used as a module, it is a real tool, see the section on this tool. This is a class and package browser, it uses the decompiler mocha and is able to find sources on your system if you give their path.
adavid.util.JDefaultResource : same as Assistant, see the section on resources. This produces a default configuration file by reflection on a class to be able to change resource definitions.
adavid.util.JMakefile : this is a simple tool which creates Makefile files in a package.
adavid.util.StatSource : this gives simple statistiques on source code inside a package. It takes by default java files, but it can do the same on C files.

JAssistant

Manual in pdf or ps.gz.

The assistant is a class and a package browser. It is divided into two parts: the main class browser and the package viewer. A third options window may be opened to control the program behavior. The main goal of this program is to be able to find very quickly a class, its source, its methods, fields, constructors... and to be able to explore the packages. Completion, and class homonyms may be enabled. Concerning the package viewer, well, you have the package hierarchy and the class hierarchy inside a selected package, which is the inheritance hierarchy inside a package. The classes which appear with an icon marked "i" are interface classes and the ones with an "a" are abstract classes. The options window allows to put filters for the lists which are given: definition with long or short names, filter on the scope (public, package, protected, private), filter on the modifiers (native, abstract, static...), the order for the search of the sources (java, jj, decompile or disassemble), sorting options and an uptdate package button to reread all your packages. The assistant was swing free. At the beginning I was happy to use swing, which is very nice, and that's why I have a swing package too. But as time passed I saw that swing had bugs and that it was not usable in a real program because it is too slow! This is the reason why I have my own tree classes in pure AWT java! It seems now that swing has been improved, specially 1.1.1, so... I came back to it for the code viewer. This explains that the code is in majority pure AWT, and the viewer in Swing.

Using another decompiler

A plug-in interface has been created since version 1.3. To use another decompiler than mocha do:

java adavid.util.JDefaultResource adavid.util.Assistant

Assistant.properties

the class names that you added are interface implementations of the interface adavid.reflect.Decompiler. You have to implement this plug-in interface and it will be used automatically. Have a look at mocha.MochaGate to have an example of the interface of mocha (reflection based). You may want to used some of its static methods, specially to open the class file.

Resources

There is a whole support for automatic resource declaration and use. The idea is: it is painfull to remember a list of 30 resources for one program, which we have to do if we want to use the ResourceBundle class of Sun. This class is powerfull, but not so usefull alone. Furthermore, using resources in a java program gives always the same kind of code and it is time consuming and error prone to do the job for each of the class you want to write. Instead, I use reflection! Just define fields public to allow access, or extend a special class or implement a special interface to allow access to Bundle. There are three proposed levels:

adavid.util.Bundle : raw managing of resource, you can get manually a component by just its name, the resource is loaded and used transparently.
adavid.util.ResourceLoader : you get automatically awt components.
adavid.util.JResource : extension to swing components (in com.sun.java.swing package).

By this way, you can produce automatically a configuration file, by using adavid.util.JDefaultResource, modify it as you want and then use it transparently if your program is using one of these three classes. A zip-file is provided to show simple examples on how to use some important classes.

API and download

This package is free, you can download it provided that you agree on the license. The package has been tested under JDK1.1.7, be carreful if you are using some JDK1.2 beta versions or other JDK versions, the virtual machine may crash. Changelog, TODO and howto.

New: html/swing java source browser available, which is like javadoc on-the-fly at the source level with simple syntax highlighting.

The package distribution file is dowloadable here and the license is LGPL.
In case of update, remove your $HOME/.PackageFinder.info, run assistant with option -update or click on Update Packages in the options dialog window, bugs were fixed to find (hopefully) all the installed packages.

It contains installation instructions and the java source files. The license of the package is LGPL.
I have produced the API with javadoc in JDK1.2.2, the different produced links are index, tree , index-alll, help.

I do not plan to put a manifest in the jar file since running under Windows requires a script with several settings.

If anyone has a non broken link to a free decompiler other than mocha, please let me know.

Known bugs

When initializing or updating the packages, the assistant may go into infinite loop if you start it from a directory where you have recursive links.
Depending on your version of motif, your window manager or maybe java (I do not know), you may have to move the window of the Assistant at the beginning in order to display the content of this window. Similarly there is a problem with the scrollbars, this affects the motif awt (Linux+Solaris) only.
Scrollbars are buggy under motif, seems to work well under Windoze :( , bad under blackdown Linux, worse for IBM JDK.
This version works badly under Kaffe virtual machine.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are properties of their respective owners. Forum comments are owned by the poster. The rest is copyright Š1999-2000 VA Linux Systems, Inc.