ERAU-FourYearPlanner

A utility for students and advisors alike to track and plan a student's academic progress.

Program Call Hierarchy

• Program begins execution in the MainGUI class. This class starts by loading courses into memory, both by reading coursesmap.dat (serialized form of MasterCourseMap, which maps course ID to Course objects) and by importing any additional courses from various XML files. Note: loading of additional courses only needs to be done once, because they are immediately added to the MasterCourseMap for use in future launches of the program.

• MainGUI then constructs GUI components. One of those is the FlowchartPane, which is populated from a predefined file (MainGUI.openPlanFile field) using the updateFlowchart method. This method parses the XML file into a StudentPlan object and creates the Flowchart based on that.

• The FlowchartPane class contains a few items. In addition to the CourseIcons (which represent a single StudentClass), the flowchart also draws lines to connect prerequisite courses and rectangles to track semesters. These rectangles are linked to corresponding SemesterYearTuple objects using the userData methods. When a course is moved, the program determines the new semester for a course by seeing which rectangle it intersects. The current version of the code does this check for all rectangles and all CourseIcon objects when one is dragged; naturally, this can be optimized if so desired. You may view the semester rectangles by changing the value of Constants.SHOW_RECTS to true.

Task List

Fixes to current code

• Fix bug where credit counts are incorrect when flowchart is first loaded
• First-time open uses the students directory, not the one containing the source code

New features - high priority

• Create XML files for other degree programs.
• Make CourseIcons non-stackable
• Pre-req lines only drawn to most recent taking of course
• User can delete classes using the GUI
• User can delete semesters using the GUI
• Prevent course from being dragged behind a pre-requisite
• Make CourseIcons more aesthetic
• Make course info stream collapsable
• Failed but retaken courses should appear as green
• Change student name from GUI
• Update CGPA automatically
• Anything else represented by a TODO tag in the code

New features - low priority

• Export to Excel (and import existing plans?)
• Enforce course offerings (only FA, for example) -> make color red for error? Have little caution sign thing?
• Degree progress auditor
• Create DTD for various XML files
• Implement proper logging framework
• Documentation: User's Guide
• Code clean-up: identify and remove deprecated classes, methods, and other files
• Map/course explorer
• Drop shadow preview when moving courses

Complete

• Shorten semester rectangles to stop scrollpane from getting really large
• Relocate semester credit counts
• Remove ability to toggle if a course is taken (deprecated - replaced by entering a grade)
• Display GPA information
• Export flowchart as picture
• Fixed: WHY ARE STUDENT CLASSES BEING DUPLICATED UPON SAVE?!
• Add user information (username, degree program, other?) to bottom information bar
• Add Cumulative GPA to bottom information bar
• Add Student Name and name of plan to XML
• Add ability to insert grade for courses taken.
• User can add classes to the plan via the GUI
• User can add semesters using the GUI
• Add flag to allow some course names to be editable, while others (required courses) cannot be edited.
• When the program starts, ask the user which XML plan to open.
• Make right-click context menus work instead of having to use my bizzare keyboard shortcut
• Add "About" message
• Make dragging less derpy
• Move tests into proper test directory (src\test\java)

Pre-deployment checklist

• All fixes fixed
• All features featured
• All tests tested