AB-3 Developer Guide

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Acknowledgements

{ list here sources of all reused/adapted ideas, code, documentation, and third-party libraries -- include links to the original source as well }

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Setting up, getting started

Refer to the guide Setting up and getting started.

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Design

Architecture

The Architecture Diagram given above explains the high-level design of the App.

Given below is a quick overview of main components and how they interact with each other.

Main components of the architecture

Main (consisting of classes Main and MainApp) is in charge of the app launch and shut down.

• At app launch, it initializes the other components in the correct sequence, and connects them up with each other.
• At shut down, it shuts down the other components and invokes cleanup methods where necessary.

The bulk of the app's work is done by the following four components:

• UI: The UI of the App.
• Logic: The command executor.
• Model: Holds the data of the App in memory.
• Storage: Reads data from, and writes data to, the hard disk.

Commons represents a collection of classes used by multiple other components.

How the architecture components interact with each other

The Sequence Diagram below shows how the components interact with each other for the scenario where the user issues the command :delete 1.

Each of the four main components (also shown in the diagram above),

• defines its API in an interface with the same name as the Component.
• implements its functionality using a concrete {Component Name}Manager class (which follows the corresponding API interface mentioned in the previous point.

For example, the Logic component defines its API in the Logic.java interface and implements its functionality using the LogicManager.java class which follows the Logic interface. Other components interact with a given component through its interface rather than the concrete class (reason: to prevent outside component's being coupled to the implementation of a component), as illustrated in the (partial) class diagram below.

The sections below give more details of each component.

UI component

The API of this component is specified in Ui.java

The UI consists of a MainWindow that is made up of parts e.g.CommandBox, ResultDisplay, PersonListPanel, StatusBarFooter etc. All these, including the MainWindow, inherit from the abstract UiPart class which captures the commonalities between classes that represent parts of the visible GUI.

The UI component uses the JavaFx UI framework. The layout of these UI parts are defined in matching .fxml files that are in the src/main/resources/view folder. For example, the layout of the MainWindow is specified in MainWindow.fxml

The UI component,

• executes user commands using the Logic component.
• listens for changes to Model data so that the UI can be updated with the modified data.
• keeps a reference to the Logic component, because the UI relies on the Logic to execute commands.
• depends on some classes in the Model component, as it displays Person object residing in the Model.

Logic component

API : Logic.java

Here's a (partial) class diagram of the Logic component:

The sequence diagram below illustrates the interactions within the Logic component, taking execute(":delete 1") API call as an example.

How the Logic component works:

1. When Logic is called upon to execute a command, it is passed to an AddressBookParser object which in turn creates a parser that matches the command (e.g., DeleteCommandParser) and uses it to parse the command.
2. This results in a Command object (more precisely, an object of one of its subclasses e.g., DeleteCommand) which is executed by the LogicManager.
3. The command can communicate with the Model when it is executed (e.g. to delete a person).
   Note that although this is shown as a single step in the diagram above (for simplicity), in the code it can take several interactions (between the command object and the Model) to achieve.
4. The result of the command execution is encapsulated as a CommandResult object which is returned back from Logic.

Here are the other classes in Logic (omitted from the class diagram above) that are used for parsing a user command:

How the parsing works:

• When called upon to parse a user command, the AddressBookParser class creates an XYZCommandParser (XYZ is a placeholder for the specific command name e.g., AddCommandParser) which uses the other classes shown above to parse the user command and create a XYZCommand object (e.g., AddCommand) which the AddressBookParser returns back as a Command object.
• All XYZCommandParser classes (e.g., AddCommandParser, DeleteCommandParser, ...) inherit from the Parser interface so that they can be treated similarly where possible e.g, during testing.

Model component

API : Model.java

The Model component,

• stores the address book data i.e., all Person objects (which are contained in a UniquePersonList object).
• stores the currently 'selected' Person objects (e.g., results of a search query) as a separate filtered list which is exposed to outsiders as an unmodifiable ObservableList<Person> that can be 'observed' e.g. the UI can be bound to this list so that the UI automatically updates when the data in the list change.
• stores a UserPref object that represents the user’s preferences. This is exposed to the outside as a ReadOnlyUserPref objects.
• does not depend on any of the other three components (as the Model represents data entities of the domain, they should make sense on their own without depending on other components)

Storage component

API : Storage.java

The Storage component,

• can save both address book data and user preference data in JSON format, and read them back into corresponding objects.
• inherits from both AddressBookStorage and UserPrefStorage, which means it can be treated as either one (if only the functionality of only one is needed).
• depends on some classes in the Model component (because the Storage component's job is to save/retrieve objects that belong to the Model)

Common classes

Classes used by multiple components are in the seedu.address.commons package.

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Implementation

This section describes some noteworthy details on how certain features are implemented.

[Proposed] Undo/redo feature

Proposed Implementation

The proposed undo/redo mechanism is facilitated by VersionedAddressBook. It extends AddressBook with an undo/redo history, stored internally as an addressBookStateList and currentStatePointer. Additionally, it implements the following operations:

• VersionedAddressBook#commit() — Saves the current address book state in its history.
• VersionedAddressBook#undo() — Restores the previous address book state from its history.
• VersionedAddressBook#redo() — Restores a previously undone address book state from its history.

These operations are exposed in the Model interface as Model#commitAddressBook(), Model#undoAddressBook() and Model#redoAddressBook() respectively.

Given below is an example usage scenario and how the undo/redo mechanism behaves at each step.

Step 1. The user launches the application for the first time. The VersionedAddressBook will be initialized with the initial address book state, and the currentStatePointer pointing to that single address book state.

Step 2. The user executes :delete 5 command to delete the 5th person in the address book. The :delete command calls Model#commitAddressBook(), causing the modified state of the address book after the :delete 5 command executes to be saved in the addressBookStateList, and the currentStatePointer is shifted to the newly inserted address book state.

Step 3. The user executes :add n/David … to add a new person. The :add command also calls Model#commitAddressBook(), causing another modified address book state to be saved into the addressBookStateList.

Step 4. The user then decides that adding the person was a mistake, and decides to undo that action by executing the undo command. The undo command will call Model#undoAddressBook(), which will shift the currentStatePointer once to the left, pointing it to the previous address book state, and restores the address book to that state.

The following sequence diagram shows how an undo operation goes through the Logic component:

Similarly, how an undo operation goes through the Model component is shown below:

The redo command does the opposite — it calls Model#redoAddressBook(), which shifts the currentStatePointer once to the right, pointing to the previously undone state, and restores the address book to that state.

Step 5. The user then decides to execute the command :list. Commands that do not modify the address book, such as :list, will usually not call Model#commitAddressBook(), Model#undoAddressBook() or Model#redoAddressBook(). Thus, the addressBookStateList remains unchanged.

Step 6. The user executes :clear, which calls Model#commitAddressBook(). Since the currentStatePointer is not pointing at the end of the addressBookStateList, all address book states after the currentStatePointer will be purged. Reason: It no longer makes sense to redo the :add n/David …​ command. This is the behavior that most modern desktop applications follow.

The following activity diagram summarizes what happens when a user executes a new command:

Design considerations:

Aspect: How undo & redo executes:

• Alternative 1 (current choice): Saves the entire address book.

  • Pros: Easy to implement.
  • Cons: May have performance issues in terms of memory usage.

• Alternative 2: Individual command knows how to undo/redo by itself.

  • Pros: Will use less memory (e.g. for :delete, just save the person being deleted).
  • Cons: We must ensure that the implementation of each individual command are correct.

{more aspects and alternatives to be added}

[Proposed] Data archiving

{Explain here how the data archiving feature will be implemented}

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Documentation, logging, testing, configuration, dev-ops

• Documentation guide
• Testing guide
• Logging guide
• Configuration guide
• DevOps guide

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Appendix: Requirements

Product scope

Target user profile:

• Developers who prefer keyboard-driven workflows

Value proposition: Vim-ify the experience for developers who are more used to the Vim interface — provide a keyboard-first, modal interaction model that lets developers navigate and edit contacts without leaving the keyboard so they feel comfortable and at home.

User stories

Use cases

Use Case 1: Updating a Contact's Role/Tag

Goal: A developer needs to update a contact's role/tag in the system for a new project. They need a way to easily find and modify the correct contact entry.

Use Case 2: Safely Deleting an Outdated Contact

Goal: A developer needs to safely delete an outdated contact entry while ensuring they don't accidentally remove the wrong person or lose valuable data.

Use Case 3: Initial Setup and Categorization

Goal: A developer needs to quickly add new contacts and categorize them using tags for effective organization and later filtering.

Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs)

1. Performance Requirements (P)

2. Usability Requirements (U)

3. Scalability Requirements (S)

4. Reliability Requirements (R)

Glossary