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98 lines
5.4 KiB
HTML
98 lines
5.4 KiB
HTML
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<title>Lucene Powered Swing Data Models</title>
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<h1><strong> Lucene Powered Swing Data Models </strong></h1>
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<p><strong>by Jonathan Simon </strong></p>
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<p> </p>
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<p><strong>What it is.</strong></p>
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<p>This package contains classes that help you easily integrate Lucene based searching
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into your Swing components. Currently there are classes to index and search
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JTables and JLists. This is done using model decorators rather than custom models
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to make it easier to search current models as well as new ones. </p>
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<p><em>These models do not actually contain any data</em>. Rather, the ListModel
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decorator (ListSearcher) and the TableModel decorator (TableSearcher) take a
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model in the constructor and delegate all calls to it (after a little alteration,
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but we'll get to that). That said, these are not full fledged models themselves.
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You still have to have another model to decorate with the searching models.
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If you are adding searching to a pre-existing model, you can use your pre-existing
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model directly. Otherwise, you can implement a model from scratch or use a pre-existing
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one to get started. </p>
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<p><strong>What it isn't. </strong></p>
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<p>A complete component: These are just models. They are not complete components
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with search fields and buttons laid out like a searchable interface. You still
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have to build that since the UI changes drastically between applciations.</p>
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<p>A complete model: There are just model decorators. You can't just set the model
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of a JList or JTable to one of these models, and you can't add data directly
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to these models. </p>
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<p>A front end for a lucene index: In other words, you can't use these classes
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to point a JTable directly to a Lucene index. Although that's interesting in
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its own right, this is not that. </p>
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<p><strong>Usage: </strong></p>
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<p>Coding to both models nearly identical. They both take the model to decorate
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at construction time. Here is the code from the demo to decorate a JTable model
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with the TableSearcher and set it as the table model. </p>
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<pre><code>//make a new JTable
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JTable table = new JTable();
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//make my base model, the model with the data
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BaseTableModel tableModel = new BaseTableModel(DataStore.getRestaurants());
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//decorate the tableModel with the TableSearcher
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TableSearcher searchTableModel = new TableSearcher(tableModel);
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//set the TableModel in the table to the TableSearcher
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table.setModel(searchTableModel);
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</code></pre>
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<p>Initially, you won't notice a difference. This is because there is no active
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search which displays all data from the underlying model. You search by calling
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the <code>search</code>() method passing a search string. This filters the data
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set down without changing the underlying data model -- one of the main reasons
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for decorating in the first place. Any valid Lucene search string should work
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(see notes for more info on this). You'll probaby have some code somewhere like
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this in your app to connect a text field and search button to the model. </p>
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<pre><code>//create components
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final JTextField searchField = new JTextField();
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JButton searchButton = new JButton("Go");
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//make an action listener
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ActionListener searchListener = new ActionListener() {
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public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
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searchTableModel.search(searchField.getText().trim().toLowerCase());
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}
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};
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//register listeners
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searchButton.addActionListener(searchListener);
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searchField.addActionListener(searchListener);</code></pre>
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<p>You also might want to have a clear search button, working the same way. But
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to keep things simple, if you search will a <code>null </code>String or an empty
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String, the search clears and you will once again see all of your data. </p>
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<p><strong>Demo notes:</strong> </p>
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<p>The list demo does real time searching. In other words, as you type, searches
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run and the result set updates. The table demo has a search button, and only
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searches when the button is clicked. They both work, I just implemented them
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this way to show the different UI metaphors and that they both work.</p>
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<p><strong>Implementation notes: </strong></p>
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<p>This code started as a proof of concept so it's not a <em>fully</em> featured
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model. Don't get me wrong, it <em>fully</em> works, but it could use some improvement
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that it will hopefully get over time. I just wanted to get it out there and
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get people using it. I'm also trying to keep everything as simple as possible.
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Here are some of the issues. </p>
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<ul>
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<li>You can't change the model after the Searcher is constructed. </li>
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<li>The search model decorators <em>do</em> update when the decorated model
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is updated, but not in a very efficient way. The whole search model is reindexed
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when anything changes. This is a definite scaling issue. </li>
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<li>The indexing and searching logic needs to be generally more configurable
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to allow custom tailoring of searched and indexing. </li>
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<li>The TableSearcher uses column names to index column values. This could be
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an issue with multiple word column names. </li>
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<li>The ListSearcher uses MultiFieldQueryParser even though its not really indexing
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multiple fields. </li>
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</ul>
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<p> </p>
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<p> </p>
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</body>
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</html>
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