The Java(TM) Developers Almanac 2000 (3rd Edition) - Softcover

Chan, Patrick; Rosanna Lee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0201432994 ISBN 13: 9780201432992

Publisher: Addison-Wesley, 2000

Synopsis

Lists information about 2,100 classes and 24,000 members in the Java class libraries. The third edition covers JDK1.0, 1.1, and J2SE v1.2, and v1.3. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

About this title

About the Author

Patrick Chan, CTO of Bluelight, was a founding member and lead developer of the original Java platform project at Sun Microsystems, Inc. He was the winner of the 1998 Duke Award at JavaOne and he is also co-author of the Java Class Libraries books and posters in the Java™ Series.

0201432994AB04062001

From the Back Cover

"I love this book. Its dense condensation of the details a developer needs makes it the one book I pull out over and over again."

—James Gosling, Fellow and Vice President, Sun Microsystems, Inc., and inventor of the Java™ programming language

"This reminds me of the catalogs of integrated circuits that we use to build hardware systems, and shows how far and fast Java™ technology has come in having a library of incredibly useful software components. An indispensable desk reference!"

—Bill Joy, co-founder, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

"I think this book is, quite simply, a stroke genius. I've been lamenting the stack of books on Java™ technology I've had to pore over when all I needed was a detail about some method or package. The Almanac is the one-stop shop I was unconsciously waiting for."

—John Vlissides, IBM TJ Watson, and co-author of the best-selling book Design Patterns
Quoted from his keynote at JavaOneSM

The Java™ Developers Almanac 2000 is the most up-to-date and complete quick reference for the Java Class Libraries—JDK™1.0, 1.1, and J2SE™ v1.2, v1.3. (Due to space constraints, the javax.swing.plaf. packages are not included.) No other quick reference includes as much information in a single convenient volume. Information from 2,100 classes and 24,000 members is carefully formatted and arranged for easy lookup.

In this book you will find:

More than 300 examplets™ that succinctly demonstrate the most common operations for a package

Complete member listings of every class (including inherited members!)

Class inheritance hierarchies for every package

An extensive cross-reference section

Detailed analysis of API changes for each major release

Quick reference information for the language, the virtual machine, Java Native Interface, PersonalJava™ platform, and more

No matter what level programmer you are, you will find this book an invaluable tool for everyday development.

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From the Inside Flap

Welcome to the third edition of The Java™ Developers Almanac.

There was a time, not long ago, when I intimately knew all of the Java class libraries. I knew how it all worked and exactly how everything fit together. I knew what subclassed what, what overrode what, and so on (of course, it helped that I was one of the original developers :-). But aside from the occasional inability to remember which argument of Vector.insertElementAt() is the index, I rarely had to refer to any reference documentation.

With version 1.1, my mastery of the Java class libraries was reduced to half. This left me feeling a little disoriented since I no longer knew my way around, and the increased size of the libraries exceeded my ability to recall the details of the signatures. When I took a peek at version 1.2, I was initially thrilled by all the new functionality I would now have at my fingertips. But as I browsed the new classes, I began to realize that my expertise was being reduced further to just a tiny fraction. I felt lost in this wonderful but vast sea of classes.

Since I make my living writing Java code, it was important that I find an efficient way of "navigating" the new libraries. What I wanted was a quick overview of all of the libraries; something that covered every class and briefly showed their relationships; something that would allow me to explore and quickly learn about new packages. This need led to this book.

The Java™ Developers Almanac is like a map of the Java class libraries. It's a compact and portable tool that covers almost all of the libraries, if only from a bird's-eye view. It's great for reminding you of things like method names and parameters. It's great for discovering the relationships between the classes, such as determining all methods that return an image. It's also great for quickly exploring a new package.

While this book is comprehensive, the libraries are so vast that there simply isn't enough room to provide equally comprehensive documentation.

The book is divided into four parts, briefly described next. Part 1: Packages

This part covers each package in alphabetical order: a brief description of the package, a description of each class and interface in the package, and a hierarchy diagram showing the relationship between the classes and interfaces in the package. This part is useful when you need an overview of a package or want to see what other related classes are available in a package. Most packages provide a number of "examplets" demonstrating common usage of classes in the package. The examplets are designed to demonstrate a particular task using the smallest amount of code possible. Their main purpose is to show you which classes are involved in the described task and generally how they interact with each other. Part 2: Classes

This part contains 500 pages of class tables, one for each class in all the covered packages. Each class table includes a class tree that shows the ancestry of the class and a list of every member in the class. Also included in the member lists are inherited members from superclasses. Thus you have a complete view of all members made available by a class. This part is useful when you're already working with a particular class and want a quick reference to all of the members in the class. Part 3: Topics

This part is a set of quick-reference tables on miscellaneous topics. For example, the topic title "Java 1.2" contains a detailed analysis of the API differences between Java 1.1 and Java 1.2. Other useful tables cover documentation comment tags and available system properties, among other topics. Part 4: Cross-Reference This part is a cross-reference of all of the Java classes and interfaces covered in this book. It includes classes from both core and extension packages. This part is useful when you have questions such as What methods return an Image object? or What are all the descendents of java.io.InputStream? Updates

As the title suggests, this book is intended to be updated whenever a new major version of the Java class libraries is released. Since it is designed for you to use in your everyday programming-related work, I would love to hear how I could improve it for the next version or simply what you thought about it. For example, are there any more useful tables you'd like to see in Part 3? Although I'm afraid I probably won't be able to reply, I promise to read and consider each suggestion I receive. You can reach me at the following e-mail address:

almanac@xeo
Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I thank Mike Hendrickson, who spent a great deal of time collaborating with me on this project. He helped me hone the ideas in this book and then supported me all of the way. It's been tremendous fun working with him.

Arthur Ogawa (ogawa@teleport), TeX master extraordinaire, provided me with TeX macros without which this book would have been impossible. Thanks for working with me in the wee hours of the morning trying to get everything just right.

I want to thank Lisa Friendly, the series editor, for all sorts of help getting this book off the ground and for getting me all of the support I needed. Special thanks to Rosanna, my wife, who helped me with writing examplets and many other parts of the book.

Many people gave me feedback or provided some other assistance in the making of this book. Thanks to Jens Alfke, Ken Arnold, Josh Bloch, Paul Bommarito, David Brownell, Michael Bundschuh, Bartley Calder, Casey Cameron, Norman Chin, Mark Drumm, Robert Field, Janice Heiss, Jeff Jackson, Doug Kramer, Sheng Liang, Tim Lindholm, Hans Muller, John Pampuch, Rob Posadas, Mark Reinhold, Dan Rudman, Georges Saab, Bill Shannon, Ann Sunhachawee, Joanne Stewart-Taylor, Laurence Vanhelsuwe, Bruce Wallace, Kathy Walrath, and Tony Welch.

Finally, I want to thank the wonderful people at Addison-Wesley who made this project a lot of fun: Sarah Weaver and Tracy Russ. Patrick Chan
April 2000
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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Welcome to the third edition of The Java(tm) Developers Almanac. There was a time, not long ago, when I intimately knew all of the Java class libraries. I knew how it all worked and exactly how everything fit together. I knew what subclassed what, what overrode what, and so on (of course, it helped that I was one of the original developers :-). But aside from the occasional inability to remember which argument of Vector.insertElementAt() is the index, I rarely had to refer to any reference documentation. With version 1.1, my mastery of the Java class libraries was reduced to half. This left me feeling a little disoriented since I no longer knew my way around, and the increased size of the libraries exceeded my ability to recall the details of the signatures. When I took a peek at version 1.2, I was initially thrilled by all the new functionality I would now have at my fingertips. But as I browsed the new classes, I began to realize that my expertise was being reduced further to just a tiny fraction. I felt lost in this wonderful but vast sea of classes. Since I make my living writing Java code, it was important that I find an efficient way of "navigating" the new libraries. What I wanted was a quick overview of all of the libraries; something that covered every class and briefly showed their relationships; something that would allow me to explore and quickly learn about new packages. This need led to this book. The Java(tm) Developers Almanac is like a map of the Java class libraries. It's a compact and portable tool that covers almost all of the libraries, if only from a bird's-eye view. It's great for reminding you of things like method names and parameters. It's great for discovering the relationships between the classes, such as determining all methods that return an image. It's also great for quickly exploring a new package. While this book is comprehensive, the libraries are so vast that there simply isn't enough room to provide equally comprehensive documentation. So if you're working with a package that is new to you, you'll probably also need a tutorial book such as The Java Tutorial, Second Edition (Campione and Walrath, Addison-Wesley, 1998), a detailed reference such as The Java Class Libraries, Volumes 1 and 2 (Chan, Lee, and Kramer, Addison-Wesley, 1998), and/or the on-line documentation at http://java.sun.com/docs. The book is divided into four parts, briefly described next. Part 1: Packages This part covers each package in alphabetical order: a brief description of the package, a description of each class and interface in the package, and a hierarchy diagram showing the relationship between the classes and interfaces in the package. This part is useful when you need an overview of a package or want to see what other related classes are available in a package. Most packages provide a number of "examplets" demonstrating common usage of classes in the package. The examplets are designed to demonstrate a particular task using the smallest amount of code possible. Their main purpose is to show you which classes are involved in the described task and generally how they interact with each other. Part 2: Classes This part contains 500 pages of class tables, one for each class in all the covered packages. Each class table includes a class tree that shows the ancestry of the class and a list of every member in the class. Also included in the member lists are inherited members from superclasses. Thus you have a complete view of all members made available by a class. This part is useful when you're already working with a particular class and want a quick reference to all of the members in the class. Part 3: Topics This part is a set of quick-reference tables on miscellaneous topics. For example, the topic title "Java 1.2" contains a detailed analysis of the API differences between Java 1.1 and Java 1.2. Other useful tables cover documentation comment tags and available system properties, among other topics. Part 4: Cross-Reference This part is a cross-reference of all of the Java classes and interfaces covered in this book. It includes classes from both core and extension packages. This part is useful when you have questions such as What methods return an Image object? or What are all the descendents of java.io.InputStream? Updates As the title suggests, this book is intended to be updated whenever a new major version of the Java class libraries is released. Since it is designed for you to use in your everyday programming-related work, I would love to hear how I could improve it for the next version or simply what you thought about it. For example, are there any more useful tables you'd like to see in Part 3? Although I'm afraid I probably won't be able to reply, I promise to read and consider each suggestion I receive. You can reach me at the following e-mail address: almanac@xeo.com

Edition details

• Publisher: Addison-Wesley
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0201432994
• ISBN 13: 9780201432992
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 1072