📚 Qt Library Management System

A comprehensive C++ library management application built with Qt, demonstrating advanced object-oriented programming concepts and design patterns.

📃 Project Report

See this link for a comprehensive and detailed project report

🎯 Overview

This application serves as a practical implementation of a library management system, showcasing:

• Object-oriented programming principles
• Polymorphism and inheritance patterns
• Qt framework integration
• MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture
• Visitor design pattern implementation

🧪 App Demo

Demo Video

🚀 Getting Started

🔨 Building the Application

1. Run the build script:

./build.sh

💻 Running the Application

The application can be run in two modes:

1. GUI Mode (default):

./build/bin/.../qt-library

2. CLI Mode (for testing backend business logic):

./build/bin/.../qt-library --cli

The CLI mode provides a simple command-line interface to test the core functionality without the graphical user interface.

🏗️ Architecture

🧩 Core Components

The application follows a structured architecture with clear separation of concerns:

• Models: Data structures and business logic
• Views: User interface components
• Controllers: Application flow and state management
• Visitors: Implementation of the visitor pattern for type-specific operations
• CLI: Command-line interface components
• Database: Data persistence layer

🧭 Navigation Flow

The application's navigation flow is inspired by RESTful patterns commonly used in web applications (like Ruby On Rails web apps), adapted for a desktop GUI context:

Action	View	View Transition
List all items	IndexView	→ IndexView
Show item	ShowItemView	IndexView → ShowItemView
New item form	NewItemView	IndexView → NewItemView
Edit item form	EditItemView	ShowItemView → EditItemView
Create item	NewItemView	NewItemView → IndexView
Update item	EditItemView	EditItemView → IndexItemView
Delete item	ShowItemView	ShowItemView → IndexView

This pattern provides a clear and intuitive way to navigate between different views while maintaining a consistent user experience.

✨ Features

• Complete CRUD operations for library items
• Dynamic form generation based on item type
• Fuzzy search functionality
• Type-safe item management
• Modern Qt-based user interface

📊 Development Status

✅ Completed Features

• New item creation with dynamic form generation
• Item viewing and detailed information display
• Item editing functionality
• Delete operations
• Search capabilities with fuzzy-like matching

🔧 Technical Details

The application leverages several key design patterns:

• Visitor pattern for type-specific operations
• MVC pattern for clean architecture
• Signal-slot mechanism for Qt-based event handling
• Smart pointer management for memory safety