Parsing java command line output to a gui

Question

Dear All,
I am trying to implement a search engine for a project, i have a java file called Searcher.java, which searches for a particular text or sentence and gives the output based on the number of hits on a particular document, the document with the max hits is displayed first and so on,all the documents are are stored in a text file, I am trying to create a GUI for this file, the gui would consist of a text box,submit button,a list and a text area , when a user enters the text to search all the entries are displayed in the list box and upon clicking the individual item in the list the description should open up in the text area.
The problem i am encountering is that i am not able to parse the output of the searcher.java file onto the GUI, i have no clue as to how to implement it , i would really appreciate it if anyone could help me out.
the code for Searcher.java is as follows
import java.util.*;
public class Searcher {
/** Specify the work directory !! */
private static final String rootDir = "C:/HR/GUIAssign/";//on PC
// private static final String rootDir = "/research/gm/Java/IR/"; // on Unix
private static final String stopWordFile = "iStopWords.txt";
private static final String docCollFile = "iDocColl.txt";
private static final String invertedIndexFile = "ioInvertedIndex.txt";
private StopWordSet stopWords = new StopWordSet(rootDir + stopWordFile);
private Stemmer stemmer = new Stemmer();
private TextTokenizer tok;
private TextParser parser;
private InvertedIndex inv;
/** Creates a new instance of Searcher */
public Searcher(TextTokenizer tok, TextParser parser) {
this.tok = tok;
this.parser = parser;
ReaderWriter rw = new TextFileReaderWriter(rootDir);
inv = rw.readInvertedIndex(invertedIndexFile);
List search(String query) {
System.out.println("\nSearching for <" + query + ">.");
List hits = new ArrayList();
int nbOfDocs = parser.getNbOfReadDocs();
System.out.println("\nSearching for <" + query + "> among " + nbOfDocs +
" documents.\n");
double scores[] = new double[nbOfDocs]; // initial values 0.0
String term;
tok.setText(query);
while(tok.hasMore()) {
System.out.println("\nNext term: ");
term = tok.nextToken();
System.out.println(term);
if(stopWords.contains(term))
continue; // this terms can be ignored
term = stemmer.stem(term); // apply the stemmer to get the root
System.out.println("\n\nInfo on the term \"" + term + "\":");
IndexTerm indexTerm = inv.getIndexTerm(term);
if(indexTerm == null)
System.out.print("Not in the vocabulary.");
else {
System.out.print("It appears " + indexTerm.getTermFreq() + " times, in "
+ indexTerm.getDocFreq() + " documents:\t");
Iterator itr = indexTerm.getIterator();
while(itr.hasNext()) {
DocFreq docFreq = (DocFreq) itr.next();
scores[docFreq.getDocId()] += docFreq.getFreq() /* / indexTerm.getDocFreq() */ ;
// create hits from documents that have non-zero scores
for(int i = 0; i < nbOfDocs; i++)
if(scores[i] > 0.0)
hits.add(new Hit(i, scores));
// sort them in descending order of scores
Collections.sort(hits, new Hit.CompareByScore());
return hits;
* @param args the command line arguments
public static void main(String[] args) {
TextTokenizer tok = TextTokenizer.getTokenizer("alpha");
TextParser parser = new DummyParser(rootDir, tok);
Searcher searcher = new Searcher(tok, parser);
List hits = searcher.search("trade and board coffee, stock x is common");
Iterator it = hits.iterator();
while(it.hasNext()) {
Hit hit = (Hit) it.next();
int index = hit.getDocIndex();
Doc doc = parser.getDoc(index);
System.out.println("\n\nDoc " + index + " has a score of: " +
hit.getScore() + "\n*** " + doc.getTitle() + " ***\n" +
doc.getText());
this code runs perfectly and gives the output on the command line
the code for the GUI is as follows
import java.awt.* ;
import java.awt.event.* ;
import javax.swing.* ;
import javax.swing.event.*;
public class HRSearch extends JFrame implements ActionListener {
// keep references to all event sources
private JLabel searchLabel;
private JTextField searchField ;
private JButton submitButton ;
private JScrollPane searchScrollPane;
private JTextArea textArea ;
public HRSearch()
          Container contentPane = /*this.*/getContentPane( ) ;
          JPanel submitPanel = new JPanel();
          submitPanel.setLayout(new FlowLayout(FlowLayout.CENTER));
          searchLabel = new JLabel("Search: ");
          searchLabel.setEnabled(false);
          submitPanel.add(searchLabel);
          searchField = new JTextField("", 20) ;
          searchField.setEditable(true) ;
          searchField.addActionListener(this) ;
          searchField.setEnabled(false);
          submitPanel.add(searchField) ;
          submitButton = new JButton("Submit") ;
          submitButton.addActionListener(this) ;
          submitButton.setEnabled(false);
          submitPanel.add(submitButton);
          contentPane.add(submitPanel, BorderLayout.NORTH);
JPanel mainPanel = new JPanel() ;
               mainPanel.setLayout(new FlowLayout(FlowLayout.LEFT)) ;
          JList searchList = new JList() ;
          // searchList.setEditable(false) ;
          searchList.setVisibleRowCount(20) ;
          searchScrollPane = new JScrollPane(searchList);
          mainPanel.add(searchScrollPane) ;
          textArea = new JTextArea("", 20, 40) ;
          textArea.setEditable(false) ;
          mainPanel.add(new JScrollPane(textArea) /*, BorderLayout.CENTER */) ;
          contentPane.add(mainPanel, BorderLayout.CENTER) ;
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
String text ; // response to action event
Object source = e.getSource( ) ;
if (source != searchField && source != submitButton)
return; // not interested in other actions
// get text, trim leading and trailing spaces
text = searchField.getText( ).trim() ;
try {
textArea.setText(textArea.getText() + "\n" + " " );
catch(NumberFormatException exc) {
JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(
this, // address of "parent" or "anchor" frame
"Not a number !", // the error message
"Number Format Exception", // title of this modal dialogue
JOptionPane.ERROR_MESSAGE // nature of this dialoge
public static void main(String args[]) {
          final JFrame f = new HRSearch();
          // f.setBounds(100,100,500,450);
          f.pack();
          f.setVisible(true);
          f.setDefaultCloseOperation(EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
i am stuck at this point and dont know what to do , please help me out.
regards
harsha

Answer 1

I'm not positive I understand your problem... but let me recap what I think it is, then provide a solution:
Your searched program can be run from the command line, and prints out (using system.out) the data you want. But NOW you want to create a GUI class, that intercepts that output, and displays it on the screen, and you can't because its going to the output stream and you're GUI isn't able to get it.
If this is the case, what you can do is add two constructors to your Searcher class:
public Searcher()
this(System.out);
public Searcher(OutputStream out)
this.out = out;
The idea being, that if you don't specify an output stream, the output goes to the console like normal. But if you do specify an output stream, the data gets fed back to you. So then in your GUI, you can do some binding of PipedInputStream and PipedOutputStream so when the Searcher class prints out, it comes right through the pipe into your GUI where you are waiting to read it.
If this wasn't your problem, sorry :(
Best,
-Riyad