Need help with idea for financial file database.

[MasterHacker110]

Ok so I have this problem: A friend that does a lot of online banking wants to keep track of their activity, so they save the "information" in a .docx file every time they are done. Now recently they have so many files that it is a hassle to search through all of them.

So they approached me, seeking that I write a program for them to fix this problem.

So I was thinking of a database of somesort. All the .docx files would be saved in this format "dd-mm-yy" in one folder.
So the user would then enter the date of the information that he seeks and the program would them search and find this file. then it would start the .docx file and the user can view the information.

Is there a better way to do this? Note they are lazy so they don't like typing a lot, they copy and paste.

[JamesCherrill]

There's no problem to search all the files names in a folder, or in opening a docx file once you've got it (assuming the machine has Word installed). I wonder if you really need the power (ie complexity/difficulty) of Java to do this - there are probably simpler tools to do the same thing, eg JavaScript?

[MasterHacker110]

Probably, but I dont know javascript that well, I am more of a C++, C and Java programmer.

[JamesCherrill]

OK then. File class has methods for getting all the files in a directory so you can loop thru them to find the file (or, if you know the exact name, just get it directly). http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/io/File.html#listFiles%28java.io.FileFilter%29
(or see new version using NIO Path/Files classes in Java 7)

Then the Java Desktop API will let you open the file in Word http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/javase/desktop-api-142259.html

The rest is just an ordinary Swing GUI. Shouldn't be difficult.

[MasterHacker110]

Thanks for your help.