Assignment 1: Java finger exercises
1 Purpose
2 Getting started
3 Adding a class
4 Adding a method
5 Grading standards
5.1 The style guide
6 Submission
6.1 Deliverables
6.2 Instructions
7.5

Assignment 1: Java finger exercises

Due:Tue 09/17 at 8:59pm; self-evaluation due Wed 09/18 at 9:59pm

Starter files: code.zip

1 Purpose

The primary goal of this assignment is to get you writing Java (again or for the first time). As a secondary goal, completing this assignment will help you ensure that you have a properly configured and working Java development environment and IDE, and that you can use the submission system (to be described elsewhere).

2 Getting started

Before you start this assignment, you should make sure that you’ve set up a proper CS 3500 environment. You can view the accompanying video tutorial for more help.

3 Adding a class

This part of the assignment is a continuation of the code written in Lecture 2: The essence of objects. In particular, you will design a Java class ConferenceProceedings (in package cs3500.hw01.publication) that implements the Publication interface from lecture.

  1. Design a class ConferenceProceedings that implements the Publication interface. It must define a public constructor:

    public ConferenceProceedings(String editorLastName, String editorFirstName, String title,
                                 String location, int year, String publisher)

    The signature of the constructor, including the order of the arguments, is important to enable automated-test–based grading for functional correctness. Don’t forget to write a good Javadoc comment.

    Note: See how to cite a conference proceedings in MLA and APA style by looking at Purdue’s Online Writing Lab conferences are mentioned as “other common sources”. You are expected to use some common sense in deciphering what the various parts of the citation are; if some information appears to be missing from the constructor above, you do not need to include it in your citation, but leave a comment in your code explaining what if anything you left out.

    Note: You do not need to wrap your output onto multiple lines, as shown on the OWL webpage; a single, very-long line is fine.

    Note: The constructor above, as defined, only allows for a single publication editor. You do not need to support multiple editors.

  2. Write a JUnit 4 test class, ConferenceProceedingsTest, that tests both public methods of ConferenceProceedings.

4 Adding a method

Compared to the version from class this week, there are two changes in the code for this homework:

To complete this assignment:

  1. You must write sufficient tests to be confident that your implementation of the format method is correct. Your tests should exercise every non-trivially distinct possibility.

    It is recommended that you write these tests before attempting to implement the format method as specified below. Doing so will help you clarify how the method is supposed to work.

    The autograder for this portion of the homework is slightly tricky, and requires your code to be designed in a particular way. First, your tests must be placed in the AbstractDurationFormatTest class, and you must leave unchanged the portion of the file marked "Leave this section alone". Second, do not explicitly use new in your tests: as we did in class, use the wdh and hours methods to construct examples of Durations.

    The autograder will run your tests against several new Duration classes with deliberately-buggy format implementations, and against one perfectly-correct implementation; to earn full credit on this autograder, you must have sufficient tests to catch all of these bugs. In other words, you will succeed on this homework if you write enough correct tests to comprehensively check the format method, such that at least one fails on any buggy implementation of it, but all tests pass on the correct implementation. Remember: test failures are good things!

  2. You must implement the Duration.format(String) method in the appropriate place(s). Your implementation must not use any of the string replacement methods such as replace or replaceAll. (We strongly suggest that you use iteration and not recursion to process a string.) The Javadoc description of this method is a sufficient specification for this method, but requires careful attention: an overly-hasty reading will probably miss some edge cases.

    The autograder will also test your implementation for correctness, regardless of whether you wrote your own test cases.

5 Grading standards

For this assignment, you will be graded on

5.1 The style guide

Coding style is important. For this class we follow Google’s Java style guide. It’s comprehesive but not very long, so I suggest reading the whole thing and then referring to it as needed.

While it can’t yet take on full responsibility for formatting code—much less for programming style more broadly—your IDE may be able to help you follow the code formatting portion of the style guide:

6 Submission

6.1 Deliverables

Your submission should include

Please ensure that your submission is a zip file. This zip file should contain your src/ and test/ folders from your project, and only those folders. These folders should mimic the folder structure required for your packages (e.g. for a class inside cs3500.hw01.duration, the src/ folder should contain a cs3500/ folder, inside which is a hw01/ inside which is a duration/ folder). Please do not put these folders within another folder before submitting, as the grader will not find your files.

GoodBad
my-submission.zip
+-src/
| +-cs3500/
|   +-hw01/
|     +-duration/
|     | +-Java files for durations
|     +-publication/
|       +-Java files for publications
+-test/
  +-whatever tests you wrote...
    possibly in packages...
my-submission.zip
+-My Awesome Homework 1/
  +-src/
  | +-cs3500/
  |   +-hw01/
  |     +-duration/
  |     | +-Java files for durations
  |     +-publication/
  |       +-Java files for publications
  +-test/
    +-whatever tests you wrote...
      possibly in packages...

6.2 Instructions

You will submit your homework at https://handins.ccs.neu.edu. We have written a how-to guide for using the handin server, if you are unfamiliar with it. (To log in to the handin server, you will need an active CCS account. If you are a CS major or have taken a CS class before, you should have one already. If you have forgotten your account name or password, go to https://my.ccs.neu.edu/ and click on the “Forgot Username” or “Forgot Password” links. Once logged in, you will need to enter some simple profile information (NUID, name and nickname, mostly), and upload a picture of yourself so we recognize you. After completing that profile, you’ll be taken to a page like this one:

In this screen: