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Part 4 of this project

Data Layer

Create mailbox tables and seed Inbox/Sent

Goal for this part

Create mailbox tables and seed Inbox/Sent.

Treat 04-Data-Layer as the source of truth for this checkpoint. If your local tree drifted, re-clone that folder rather than mixing files from neighbors.

What you should already know

You do not need prior Swing experience for part 1. Later parts assume you finished the earlier snapshots on the same machine.

  • JDK 17+ and Maven are installed
  • You can run mvn from a terminal
  • You have a desktop session for the GUI window

Why Swing fits Postmark Desk

Swing’s split panes mirror classic mail clients: folders, message list, and reading pane—without needing a real SMTP server at first.

Store messages in SQLite so compose/send/receive stay local and deterministic for classroom demos.

Checkpoint

After you run the snapshot, you should recognize the behavior described in the goal—before you move on. If the window (or server) never appears, stop and fix the run steps.

Code shape

Snapshots stay small on purpose. Look for this kind of core call as you read the folder:

st.execute("CREATE TABLE messages(id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, folder TEXT, subject TEXT, body TEXT)");

How to run it

Clone the teaching repo, open 04-Data-Layer, install what the README asks for, then run mvn -q exec:java.

git clone https://github.com/michaeldunga1/fcc-swing-email.git
cd fcc-swing-email/04-Data-Layer
mvn -q -DskipTests package
mvn -q exec:java

Common mistakes

  • Ignoring platform-specific install notes in the snapshot README
  • Creating tables twice with conflicting schemas
  • Forgetting to commit/close the database connection in long sessions
  • Looking for seed data in part 3 before the data layer exists

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