Description
Goals: Gain experience working with sorting arrays of polymorphic data.
Part 1: Project Summary (Due: 5pm Oct. 23rd; Drop dead date: 5pm Oct. 24th)
Implement a program to read in a large amount of personal data for customers of a factitious gym. Then, sort
the data according to the criteria defined below. Finally, write the resulting sorted data out to an output file.
Part 2: Processing
There are two types of customers of squale.com (a social-network where people exercise (a gym)): those that
have registered to use our facilities and those that have actually become “gold members”. We need to organize
our large amount of data for our reports, so we hired you.
Read in the personalData.txt file (located in the data sources directory shown below). Your program should
use the java.net.URL class and java.util.Scanner class to read directly from the web server. (That is, do
NOT download the file and then have your program open and read from the file directly.) Data contained in the
input file is provided as a series of rows (one row per member, with a single header row as the first line of the
input file). Within each row, there are a number of data fields, each separated by a tab character (\t). Each row
of data includes the following columns of data:
• Number
• Gender
• GivenName
• MiddleInitial
• Surname
• StreetAddress
• City
• State
• ZipCode
• EmailAddress
• TelephoneNumber
• NationalID
• Birthday
• CCType
• CCNumber
• CVV2 (card verification
value)
• CCExpires
• UPS Tracking Code
Most of this data can be treated as String data in your objects. However, you should treat the record number,
and zip code number as integers. The credit card number should be represented as a long value, and the cvv2
code should be a short. Your program should include an array of polymorphic Member and GoldMember objects,
which are the contents of the data file. Those members without credit card information are represented as
Member objects; those with credit card and shipping data are both Member and GoldMember. (Hint: GoldMember
is a subclass of Member). Include an abstract Person class in the hierarchy that represents a person’s national ID,
given name, middle initial, surname, gender, and address data (only!).
Note that people who do not make a purchase (Member) do not have data in the final five fields (cctype,
ccnumber, cvv2, ccexpires, ups code) of the input file. The storage array should not be of type Comparable (see
below), though the array objects will be. There are 40,000 people listed in the input file, so you can hard-code
your array to that size. Do not count the number of lines in the input file.
The following data for each member should be encapsulated together into their own object and aggregated
accordingly from the Person object: street address, city, state, and zip code. Make this an Address object.
Similarly, the email address, telephone number, and birthday data fields should be encapsulated as a
MemberInfo object and aggregated in a Member object. Credit card information (cc type, cc number, ccv2, cc
expires) should be encapsulated as a CreditCard object and aggregated within the GoldMember class. The
Page 2 of 4
image below shows some of desired structure (note that methods are not included in the diagram and are left up
to you to design/create). Note that the diagram does not show the inclusion of the Comparable class.
Once read in, sort the data using the java.util.Arrays class. (There’s a method to sort Objects that
implement the Comparable interface present in the class.) Each data item should be sorted based on the
following criteria:
• sort on the last name (ascending)
• then on the state abbreviation (descending), and finally
• then on the street address (descending)
After the sorting is completed, open a new output file named sortedData.txt. Write your sorted data to this
file, one record per line, in a similar manner as the input file (I strongly suggest a tab-delimited output file). All
data should be appropriately formatted based on conventional rules. That is, some zip codes may need to be
prefixed with a 0 (see Rhode Island). Use the DecimalFormat class to correctly format your output. Check all
of the fields for this type of error; we see others that have “issues”.
Page 3 of 4
Part 3: Resources
• The Java API documentation is located at: http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/index.html
• The input file used for this project is located on a server in the Amazon.com cloud. You can find the file at
the following address: https://s3.amazonaws.com/depasquale/datasets/personalData.txt
• Since the full “input file” is over 6.4 MB in size, you can use a smaller “test” input file for your
development purposes. Your final submission should read the “full” input file listed above. The test file is
located at: https://s3.amazonaws.com/depasquale/datasets/personalData2.txt
Part 4: Specifics for the delivery of this project:
1. Create and fully test a small ANT build file (named build.xml) as shown in class. The build file should
contain a target that compiles the project (name the target compile) and a target that cleans the .class and
output file from the build area (name that target clean).
2. To submit your project, jar up the source code file(s) and the build.xml file for the project into a jar file
named userid.jar, where userid is your TCNJ userid (used for your Unix account and your email address).
The task of organizing and creating the jar file for each deliverable will be up to you. You should always
check your work, as this file is what I will be grading. You want to ensure that only the files I requested are
contained in the jar file. This means nothing else (no data files, no .class files, no .java~ (backup) files, etc.)
You may submit the project any number of times until the due date. Only the last submission will be
downloaded, examined, and graded by me. Late points will be deducted for projects turned in starting 1
minute after the due date (that’s why they are called due dates!) Following the drop-dead date for a project,
no solutions will be graded for the project. At such a point in time, you will receive a zero grade for the
work if you have not uploaded a solution to Canvas.
3. Late points will be deducted for projects turned in starting 1 minute after the due date (that’s why they are
called due dates!) Following the drop-dead date for a project, no solutions will be graded for the project. At
such a point in time, you will receive a zero grade for the work if you have not uploaded a solution to
Canvas.
Part 5: Advice and Disclaimer
Plan your schoolwork and life accordingly. Many students don’t adequately plan their work schedules and
attempt to finish programs at the last minute. Doing so usually introduces bugs/problems into the solution.
Consider how much time you will require to adequately test your solution for boundary cases and bugs. Failure
to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part!
I do not give individual extensions for projects, and rarely give class extensions for work. You have nearly a
week and a half to complete this project. I suggest you start your design as soon as possible. Consider what
you need to build to solve the problem at hand. Programming involves designing a solution, implementing your
solution, and testing your solution.
Part 6: Do You Need Help?
Are you stuck? Ask yourself if you have planned the design of your project. Have you asked questions in
class? Did you attend the lectures, and labs? Have you come to see me? Like a textbook or web site, I am a
resource that I expect you to use throughout the course of the semester. If you are stuck with your project, I
strongly suggest you make an appointment to come see me in person. Generally, I can offer some guidance or
help to get you back on the path.
Page 4 of 4
When you come to see me, plan on bringing your source code to me on a memory stick or laptop. Do not email
me your source code, I do not provide email-based help for coursework. I prefer that you make time to visit me
in my office where we can sit down and discuss your source code together. I can ask you questions and you can
tell me why you coded something the way you did. We can use my whiteboard to draw large diagrams and talk
about good solutions and designs. This is not something that can be done easily through email.
Part 7: Code Commenting
Be absolutely sure that you refer to and follow the code commenting guideline posted for all of my classes.
Detailed comments should appear at the start of each source code file, each class, and method. For blocks of
contiguous code in methods, comments should be placed above the code blocks. Also, each instance variable
should be named appropriately (no one letter variable names) and commented. While this is most of what I’m
looking for, it’s not all of it. Refer to the code commenting guidelines for the correct listing of comments that
are required for all projects.