Creating a basic application from JViews Gantt beans

Developing with design tools > Using the Designer > Writing an application > Creating a basic application from JViews Gantt beans

The basic steps for creating an application that will use a Gantt or Schedule chart are:

1. Create your GUI with various Swing components, such as a working area, a menu bar and a toolbar.

public class SimpleGantt extends JPanel

{

public IlvHierarchyChart chart;

public SimpleGantt(JFrame frame) {

super();

// Prepare the JPanel's appearance

setLayout(new BorderLayout());

2. Create an instance of a Gantt or Schedule chart in the Java® API.

IlvGanttChart chart = new IlvGanttChart();

3. Connect the instance to a data model or load a project file that has been created and saved in the Designer.

// Bind the Gantt Chart to the Data Model

IlvGanttModel model = new IlvDefaultGanttModel();

chart.setGanttModel(model);

// Apply the project file to the chart

chart.setProject(project);

See Integrating a Gantt chart into an application for more about loading a project file. There are sample project files in:

<installdir>/jviews-gantt/bin/designer/data/examples

NOTE After creating a project using the Designer for JViews Gantt with a JDBC data source, the test/preview mode does not allow editing of the activities. The same project is not editable in a running application either. This happens when you use IlvGanttJDBCDataSource, which will result in a read-only model.

Instead of loading a project file, you can load a custom data model and then load a style sheet (.css file) defined in the Designer. See Integrating a style sheet into an application. In this case, you use only the styling developed with the Designer and not the whole project.

Refer to the samples in <installdir>/jviews-gantt/samples provided with Rogue Wave JViews Gantt for examples of how to create applications that use Gantt or Schedule charts.

The example <installdir>/jviews-gantt/codefragments/application/simpleGantt/src/SimpleGantt.java shows a Swing application with a basic Gantt chart. This Swing application extends JPanel. It is located in:

<installdir>/jviews-gantt/codefragments/application/simpleGantt

See Gantt charts in Developing with the SDK for how to create a Gantt chart and customize it with the SDK instead of the Designer.