Homework 4: A To-Do List

Assigned: Tuesday, 22 April 2003
Due: Tuesday, 29 April 2003

Summary: In this assignment, you will build a simple to-do list.

Citation: This assignment is based on another assignment (this time in C) written by Samuel A. Rebelsky.

Turning it in: Email me your files. Use the ECA.

Collaboration: You may work in group of up to size three, and may discuss your design with any size group. You may also work with each other on general debugging issues. You may not work with someone you worked with before.

Contents:

• Background
• Basics of the Assignment
• Tasks
• TaskManager Capabilities
• Required Classes

Background

We have been exploring the List ADT and its variants in class recently. One of the standard applications of lists is to keep track of tasks that need to be done. Since my creativity is limited, I'm making that task your first list project.

Basics of the Assignment

You have many goals in the project. First, you must finish implementing one of our list classes (either ArrayList or LinkedList). Next, you must build a simple Task class for the tasks that get stored in the list. Third, you must build a TaskList class from those previous classes. Finally, you must build a TaskManager class that provides the user interface.

Tasks

Each task should store, at minimum,

• the name of the task,
• a deadline for the task (that is, when the task must be done by), and
• a priority for the task.

TaskManager Capabilities

At minimum, your TaskManager class (and, therefore, your underlying TaskList class) should provide at least the following operations:

• Print all the elements of the list.
• Print the highest-priority task.
• Save the list to a file.
• Read the list from a file.
• Print all tasks due before a certain date/time.
• Add a new task to the list.
• Remove a task from the list.

You may add others you deem appropriate.

Required Classes

You must create at least the following five classes and interfaces for the two parts of the assignment.

• ArrayList or LinkedList, used to implement the List interface.
• Task, used to store tasks.
• TaskList, used to store lists of tasks. Note that the constructor for this class should probably take a plain List as its parameter.
• TaskManager, the user interface.

You may, of course, create other classes.