GUI to take URL as input

Programming Questions

nickecarlo

in Programming Questions • 7 months ago

Hey,

I am working on a Stemmer (implementation of Porter's Stemmer on Processing) that takes text files as input and takes the words and stems them down to their roots.

I have set it up so it has a GUI file chooser (JFileChooser) that helps the user pick a file from their computer and then the file is fed into FileInputStream (again with Java). Then the file is read character by character (or rather byte by byte) with the read() method and the words are then stemmed down to their roots. Here's the relevant code for the filechoose and the inputstream.

final JFileChooser fc = new JFileChooser();
int returnVal = fc.showDialog(this, "Open");
file = fc.getSelectedFile();
FileInputStream in = new FileInputStream(file);

This works perfectly and I have it set up the way I like. However, as the title suggests, what I am after is something like JFileChooser that I can use to enter URLs and then feed it to FileInputStream. I've been looking all over the place but haven't been able to find anything at all. I also realize I would need an HTML parser (maybe not?) but for that I have heard of something called TagSoup or something like that. Not sure that's the best way to go or not.

I'd really appreciate it if someone could help me out with these things.

Replies(4)

PhiLho

Re: GUI to take URL as input

7 months ago

Dumb but simple idea: make the user to paste the URL in a text file, read this text file to get the information...
Otherwise, you might need a GUI library, like G4P, controlP5 or Interfascia.

HTML parser: TagSoup is an option, but I think JSoup is more modern / up-to-date / easier to use. It is mentioned a few times in the forum.

andreas.s..

Re: GUI to take URL as input

7 months ago

Hi, like PhiLho suggests, make use of one of the gui libraries that come with a textfield implementation, for example. I had also found this textfield sketch with clipboard access in my sketchbook:

(To parse HTML check the proHTML library, not sure if it works with the latest versions of processing though)

import java.awt.datatransfer.DataFlavor;
import java.awt.Toolkit;
TextField textfield;
void setup() {
size(500, 200);
textfield = new TextField(10, 100, 400, 24);
textFont(createFont("Arial", 12));
}
void draw() {
background(0);
textfield.display();
}
boolean cmd;
void keyPressed() {
if (key!=CODED) {
if (!cmd) {
if ( key==BACKSPACE) {
textfield.text = textfield.text.substring(0, max( 0, textfield.text.length()-1 ) );
}
else if (key==ENTER) {
println("process input : "+textfield.text);
textfield.text = "";
}
else {
textfield.text += key;
}
}
else {
if (key=='v') {
String url = getClipboard();
if (url.startsWith("http")) {
textfield.text = url;
} else {
println("sorry no URL found in clipboard");
}
}
}
}
else {
// 157 = COMMAND key
cmd = (keyCode==157) ? true:false;
}
}
void keyReleased() {
if (key==CODED) {
cmd = false;
}
}
class TextField {
String text = "";
float x, y, w, h;
TextField(float theX, float theY, float theW, float theH ) {
x = theX;
y = theY;
w = theW;
h = theH;
}
void display() {
noStroke();
fill(255, 50);
pushMatrix();
translate( x, y );
rect( 0, 0, w, h );
fill(255);
textAlign(LEFT, CENTER );
text( text, 2, h/2 );
fill(255, abs( sin( frameCount * 0.1 ) * 255 ) );
rect(textWidth(text) + 2, 2, 1, h-4);
popMatrix();
}
}
String getClipboard() {
String s ="";
try {
s = (String)Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getSystemClipboard().getData(DataFlavor.stringFlavor);
return s;
}
catch(Exception e) {
}
return s;
}

andreas schlegel, http://www.sojamo.de

nickecarlo

Re: GUI to take URL as input

7 months ago

Thanks for the reply guys. I was wondering if Processing had an in built system to handle such inputs. So technically I could just as easily use a Swing component like JTextField, take that in as a String, use Processing's createInput() to pull in the URL and then use an HTML parser to parse over the relevant bits? (or an RSS parser to parse over RSS feeds).

Or is too many Swing components interspersed with Processing stuff a bad idea?

PhiLho

Re: GUI to take URL as input

7 months ago

Using Swing with Processing is generally discouraged, that's why there are GUI libraries... The threading model of Swing conflicts with the one of Processing.

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