What's the easiest way to make a password system? 10 Duke Points!

Question

Hello everyone,
What's the easiest way to make a password system in java?
I'd like to be able to:
1) store passwords for about 6 people.
2) have the people only interact with my program using my Eclipse console with no GUIs, pop-ups or Swing code.
3) let the people have the ability to create/delete their own passwords and logins. (ideally)
Having searched around the Internet, it seems that the options are to:
A) have code that allows users create files, write to files, read from files.
B) have code that serializes objects - this seems pretty difficult.
C) have code that has a hash table of some kind - although I don't really know hash tables very well and am not sure if they can store data over time unless the program is always running (which is an option).
D) use some sort of javadoc like PassWordCallback - this one looks the easiest as the code already seems to be there but I'm not really sure how to include this type of stuff in my code.
E) have code that allows users to input their password, which I've given them on a piece of paper, and then allow the code to match it to a file - this wouldn't let the users create their own passwords though.
Anyway, hope you can help!
I have a 'Head First Java' book and a 'Java for Dummies' book if you know of anything directly useful in these books.
Edited by: woodie_woodpeck on Jan 11, 2009 3:51 AM

Answer 1

bastones_ wrote:
Using GUIs and Swing is really easy, I have only been using Java for a week now and I have already made a simple application with events. First of all Swing is a package and you need to import it (as described in the documentation).
When you click on the Swing package in the documentation to the second frame you'll see JFrame when you scroll down. JFrame's are the main windows on your screen. JFrame is a class therefore it needs to be instantiated (making an instance of that class so we can use it). After all, everything is based around classes.
JFrame frame = new JFrame("Title here");
Note: The "JFrame" before the frame vaiable name is the "data type" of the variable, really we're making an object type (I think its called) just like we'd do String frame if we wanted to make a frame variable that is of type String.
As explained in the [JFrame section of the documentation|http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/javax/swing/JFrame.html] in the "Constructor Summary" section is the different types of Construtors that are made available to us when we instantiate the JFrame class. One of the construtors available are:
JFrame(String title)
... which is exactly what I did above in the brackets/parentheses (its telling us we can add a String title).
Remember constructors do not have any return type or anything and is not a method, because it is the same name as the class and when we instantiate we call the constructor. And so the JFrame class has many constructors, one is for making a title for our JFrame and another is just instantiating without a title. If there wasn't the JFrame(String title) and just JFrame() constructor, we wouldn't be able to add a title as we made an instance of JFrame.
So once we've made an instance of JFrame we have all the methods available (and all of the methods are shown in the API documentation).
Hope you understand now :).Wow. Thanks a lot bastones_. I think Swing is just a bit beyond me at the moment and will require quite a bit of time for me to master. Is there not an easier way of making a password system? I think that A (see above) seems the easiest for me at the moment and D (see above) would be nice if I could just figure out how to use the javadoc.