Homework 7: A To-Do List

Assigned: Friday, 23 April 2004
Due: Thursday, 29 April 2004

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

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

Turning it in: Email me your files.

Collaboration: You must work with at least one other person. You may work in group of up to size four, and may discuss your design with any size group. You may also work with each other on general debugging issues.

Contents:

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

Background

We have been exploring the GeneralList 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 implement the GeneralList interface using circular, doubly-linked lists. 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 unique task identifier,
• an expected length of time that the task will take to complete,
• a deadline for the task (that is, when the task must be done by), and
• a priority for the task.

If you want extra work, store for each task a list of prerequisite tasks that must be completed before that task can be started.

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.
• Print all tasks due before a certain date/time.
• Print all tasks that take less than a user-specified time.
• Add a new task to the list.
• Remove a task from the list.

You may add others you deem appropriate. If you've implemented the prerequisite tasks mentioned above, you could print out a list of all the tasks that must be completed before a user-selected task.

Required Classes

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

• CircularlyLinkedList, which implements the GeneralList interface.
• DoublyLinkedNode, which is used in the construction of CircularlyLinkedList objects. Task, which stores tasks.
• TaskList, which stores lists of tasks. Note that the constructor for this class should probably take a plain GeneralList as its parameter.
• TaskManager, the user interface.

You may, of course, create other classes.