Goal for this part
Maintain a simple contacts list.
Treat 07-Contacts 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
mvnfrom 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.
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 07-Contacts, 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/07-Contacts
mvn -q -DskipTests package
mvn -q exec:javaCommon mistakes
- Ignoring platform-specific install notes in the snapshot README
- Hard-coding paths that only work on your machine
- Skipping confirmation on destructive actions
- Mixing secondary-model IDs with primary ones