• Textbook Chapter 1, 3-7 except 4.7, and 19.
• Java API Documentation - DateFormat and SimpleDateFormat for conversion between String and Date types.

[CS320Answers]

This quarter we are going to implement a web application called CS320Answers, which is similar to Stack Overflow where people can post questions and get answers. In this assignment, you are going to implement some basic features using servlets or a combination of servlets and HTML pages.

1. (30pt) The Question List page shows the list of the questions that are currently in the system:

Note that the list of questions should be sorted by Post Time in descending order, and Post Time should be formatted as shown in the example above.

2. (10pt) When a user clicks on a tag, only the questions with that tag should be displayed. For example, if a user clicks on the "servlet" tag, the display should be changed to

And clicking on the All Questions link should take the user back to the full question listing.

3. (20pt)  When a user clicks on the Post a Question link, the application shows the Post Question page where the user can post a new question:

Tags are keywords of a question. Each tag is a single word with lower-case letters. Each question must have at least one tag, and multiple tags are separated by white spaces. 

3. (20pt) After a user posts a new question, or when a user clicks on a question in the question list, the application displays the question and its answers as follows:

Clicking on the Back to Questions link should take a user to the Question List page.

4. (20pt) A user may use the form on the Question Display page to submit an answer to a question.

[NOTES]

• I recommend that you start by designing the data classes: Question, Answer, and User. Once you have completed these classes, the rest of the application, i.e. servlets, HTML pages, and later, JSP pages, are simply means to display and update the data objects.
• You should implement the application using several simple servlets instead of a big, complex one - this will make the development process much easier and more enjoyable.
• To focus on the main functionality, we will assume that the users will always provide proper input - in other word, you do not need to implement any input validation.
• Since we have not covered databases yet, the application should store questions and answers in Servlet Context. The data will be lost after the application is unloaded or reloaded, and that's OK for this assignment.
• Do not spend too much time beautifying the user interface - you can do that in later assignments when we use JSP.