I am interested in creating a text-based game in Java and am wondering how I would replicate the common server console (ie: nogui server mode in the minecraft-server for example) - as in there is always a line at the bottom of the console for input, and everything else above it is output which can be written to asynchronously.
How would I get started on this? I am unfamiliar with the terminology regarding this sort of stuff and also what libraries to use to begin with.
You should take a look to Java curses library. I haven't use it but, it looks like what you want.
This library may well be helpful: I created it in order to implement a small Rogelike game in Java:
https://github.com/mikera/swing-console
It uses Swing to create a simulated console-style window.
Related
I did a project for university (it is a personal implementation of Zork the Game). As asked I did it with a text interface, using system.out.print. Is there a way to "put the text interface in a GUI" ? I mean for example a simple window with 2 fields, one that displays text output and one for the text input by keyboard.
I downloaded windowsBuilder for eclipse but.. I dont know what to do! :(
Thanks!
Sure there is, just change the output stream for System class. Create a PrintStream that will write out your data to your swing components and then replace it in the System class to use it.
System.setOut(printStream);
If you're doing this for a text game, I'd recommend using a Glk library. Glk is a cross-platform windowing I/O system designed for text games. You may have to write a JNI interface since the libraries tend to be written in C: an existing project called GlkJNI is meant to work the other way around, so a C program can use a Java UI, but it might be helpful anyway.
For an example of how to create a GUI that does what you are asking, take a look at this article: http://www.comweb.nl/java/Console/Console.html
This does not use best practices for building a GUI, but for quick and dirty, it'll get you started. You really should read up on how to properly write a Swing application, though, if this is going to be something you are serious about.
My problem is pretty simple i have an application written in java and i want to send commands to it ex ( click a button , send some key strokes , click a menu item ) from my application witch i will write in delphi. Is this concept even possible ?
I actually had to do this at the last place I worked, you can get around it with complex window events etc... as mentioned above but if you have access to the Java source simply write other access methods either that call a specific runtime that closes (i.e. trigger a public static void main(String[] args); via a native call or via the command line.
OR
Implement simple a simple message system between Java/Delphi over TCP/IP and send either XML or some simple string mappings (I think it took about an hour to set up Maps that could pass back and forth).
In my case we were simply handling reporting and talking to the database so it was pretty easy to work around without getting into a native call. Alternatively, there is(was) a port of the JNI for Delphi that worked pretty well with Delphi 7. I have no clue what runtime you're using but it might be an option.
Honestly, the TCP/IP method is probably the easiest. It doesn't take a lot to implement, it doesn't eat a lot of resources and it allows you to execute "myMenuItem.onClick()" pretty easily as a packet, you just have to expose the methods.
http://home.pacifier.com/~mmead/jni/delphi/
Well It depends on which Java GUI technology is used . If SWT or AWT is used , you can get handle of UI components, because these two toolkit uses native libararies.. On the other hand, if that java application GUI is created by beans of SWING, you can not get any handle. Because, swing toolkit is implemented by pure Java..
If the Java app can be modified, the Java Robot API (included in JRE 1.3 and newer) might be helpful. This would allow to control a Swing application which does not provide windows handles as Gursel wrote. Obviously there would be some IPC required, which could be implemented using sockets for example.
The short: YES, but depending on the Java application, it might be difficult and unreliable.
I'm not a Java guy so I don't know if this is the norm, but the one Java application I had to automate displayed a single dialog that only used 1 (one) window handle! It was made up of several edit boxes, buttons, what looked like combo-boxes, but those were not true Windows controls but widgets re-created by whatever GUI toolkit the original developer used. I wasn't able to use normal Windows messages to manipulate those because, as far as Windows was concerned, it was a single window.
Happily the only thing I had to do was click a single button. I used mouse_event to move the mouse over the expected area for the button and then again to click the button. It works, but manipulating input this way is both unreliable and fragile.
To clarify Daniel Chapman and mjn comments, find below a code extract showing Delphi controlling a Java Swing UI component (TextField) contained in a Jframe based on NetBeans ClientEditor sample.
Please notice, that this example does not use the Java source code or use TCP, XML, Windowing events handling technics or IPC, it's just simply Delphi code calling some Java code.
procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
FJFrame := Tjavax_swing_JFrame.Create('Client Editor');
FClientEditor := Tclienteditor_ClientEditor.Create;
FJFrame.GetContentPane().Add(FClientEditor);
FJFrame.Pack;
FJFrame.SetVisible(True);
end;
procedure TForm1.Button2Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
// Delphi setting a value in a Java Swing UI component
FclientEditor.FirstNameTextField.SetText('Delphi 1stName');
end;
The long type names are just as a matter of clarity for this example and can be shorter of course.Additionally there is no problem with JNI in this example.
Have you had a look at Java for Delphi?
It let's you call Java from Delphi exposing the Java types as Delphi types.
I'm creating a Win32 application that controls another application which is coded in Java using AWT components. I figured that if I can retrieve the main List of the application and cast it with the JLIB library I'd be able to read its content.
First of all, am I right or I won't be able to get the real content of the List ? If I'm right I'd like to know how to achieve this since I didn't found any good spy software for Java and Spy++ only show a SunAwtComponent. Which I presume in the container for the whole Java application.
I'm not expecting someone to tell me how to do the whole thing but only a couple of direction would be really great since I've been looking for that for a while now.
Thanks for the replies !!!
Quite likely the Java application actually uses Swing, not AWT. Swing draws its own widgets on top of a single AWTComponent, so the list widget that you see doesn't exist from Windows point of view.
I assume you cannot modify this Java application so that it can be controlled over some reasonable API (e.g. JMX or REST)?
You can try running the JVM with JPDA debugging interface enabled. You can then use JPDA APIs to change data structures and directly call methods on any object in that program. Finding the right ones to call will be hard, though.
See http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/jdk/api/jpda/jdi/index.html
I am writing a console application in Java. It is similar to a chat client: Input and output are asynchronously made. The problem is that if some output is made while the user is in the middle of typing, the lines will get mixed up on the screen.
I am looking for a solution which allows me to have a input area separate from the output area. At the moment I am using an extra thread which polls a BufferedReader on System.in.
The program needs to run on a Linux server and be accessed via an ssh session. So any hints that only work in this environment are fine.
Are there any high level libraries which can do this? Or is there a smart trick using terminal / ANSI codes? The ANSI codes s (save cursor) and r (restore cursor) might be helpful but how do i know where to jump to do the output and how do i handle scrolling?
I recall a long time ago working with similar things but in C++. I was using the ncurses library then. Check out javacurses which seems to be a Java implementation of something like ncurses.
Sounds like you need to use Curses. JCurses is a Java implementation of the Curses library and will give you control of the terminal to allow scrolling, positioning etc.
I'm interested in knowing how can my Java program listen to the Print event generated by the underlying OS. As my project is based on Java, the Print job event listener should not be platform depended.
To be more specific my program will be running on the background and should be notified of the print job if a user is trying to print pages from MS Word (for an example). The event should notify not only the print job being started but also other details such as No. of pages, the document location etc (if that's possible). A link to complete tutorial or some snippets would be much appreciated. Thanks!
We are a C++ and Java shop. I have written code that does pretty much what you are asking for. It was written in C++ for Win32 (and was a right bugger to get correct - this is one of the least well documented areas of the Win32 API - and different printers send different event streams, so it can be really tough to develop robust print queue handling).
If someone has created a JNI library for doing this stuff (unlikely), there is no way it will be cross-platform. The effort involved would be enormous (different OSes handle print queues and notifications in completely different ways).
My recommendation would be to brush up on your Win32 programming (with C/C++). Once you have things working there, if you absolutely must have them interact with your Java app, you can use JNI to wrap it.
Here's MSDN articles on printer change notification monitoring (you'll have to call OpenPrinter first - but the next call is FindFirstPrinterChangeNotification): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd162722(VS.85).aspx
If you are trying to support *nix and mac as well, you'll need to dig for those separately. Good luck.