transforming the e-concordiensis senior project – computer science – 2005 edward maas advisor:...
TRANSCRIPT
Transforming the e-Transforming the e-
ConcordiensisConcordiensis Senior Project – Computer Science – 2005
Edward MaasAdvisor: Prof. Cass
Technology UsedOpen Source JAVA Tools: Model-View-Controller for the Web
Struts (http://struts.apache.org/ ) Object / Relational Persistence and Query Service
Hibernate (http://www.hibernate.org/ )Image Manipulation Image Conversion (TIFF-to-PNG)
Tiff2png tool (http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/apps/tiff2png.html) Image Scaling
JMagick(http://www.yeo.id.au/jmagick/)
Thursday/ Friday
Editors review articles and
begin layout in Quark
Photos added and edited by photo editor.
Each section sends 1 quark
file to be printed
Webmaster uses Quark
files to create PDF files
Webmaster hand creates an
index page summary
Writers email an article to appropriate
section editor
Wednesday
Tuesday Sunday
Current Weekly Process
MotivationThere is little dispute that one of the primary goals of the press is to convey information. Traditionally, this was done by printing it in the form of newspapers and magazines. Yet over time, technology, such as the internet, has made it easier and quicker for people to get printed information from their favorite sources. Today, most publications offer an electronic edition, but not all of these e-editions are created equally. Some are rather complicated for their staff to create while others are painful to read. My senior capstone design project addresses both of these potential problems through the creation of a custom package designed for school newspapers, specifically the Union College Concordiensis.
Existing Infrastructure
Entity Relationship Diagram
Name Purpose CreateSection Form for the editor-in-chief to create a new section CreateEdition Form for the editor-in-chief to create a new edition AddStaff Form for the editor-in-chief to add a new member of the
staff AddArticles Form for the editor-in-chief or section editor to add
articles AddPhotos Form to upload photos AssignPhoto Form to add a photo to an article PublishEdition Form for editor-in-chief to publish an edition SearchForm Form for users to search edition and archives SigninForm Login form for admin users
Critical Forms
Struts at work –
CheckImages.jsp
AssignPhoto FormCustom
Layout Tag:
StoryTag.java
Layout Implementation
Relational Database (MySQL 4.1)
Model View (JSP) Controller
Presentation ( jsp includes & tiles )
Browser (Mozilla, IE, Firefox, Safari)
Objec
t 2 Re
lation
al(Hi
berna
te)
STRUTS
1
4
5
3
22 22
How it works:
Requests are made to the application by people surfing the site. These requests are passed directly to the model portion of struts. The model then contacts the controller to decide the appropriate action to take with the given request. For example, if the user is filling out a form and misses a required field, the controller will redirect the user back to the page he or she has just worked on to correct the mistake. At step 3, the controller may contact the database via a layer of persistent objects as part of the package Hibernate. In doing this, the user does not need to execute SQL commands, but rather can execute queries via a Hibernate Query Language. Rather than returning fields, Hibernate returns lists of “value objects”. Finally, at step 4, the controller passes data to the view which is then reassembled in step 5 using additional presentation layer techniques, like merging additional jsp files for header and footer.
Next Steps and Future Work Start product beta testing with Concordiensis Editors Deploy Database and Application on VU Performance Test under actual traffic! Integrate Feeds from College News Wire
Hibernate Value Objectsprivate Integer Id;
public Integer getId() {
return this.Id;
}
public void setId(Integer Id) { this.Id = Id;}
Handwritten HTML with PDF Files
Current process that the Concordiensis
Editors follow each week to create the newspaper! New
version will allow each editor to create his or her electronic edition
individually.