Detailed API reference guide

A complete doxygen-generated API reference guide is available here as HTML, or can be downloaded as a precompiled Windows help file from here.

Installation

To install the code, just unzip it and put the folder somewhere convenient for you. If you're going to build the demo application (available from the downloads page), then that will expect to be alongside the main juce folder (i.e. in the same parent directory).

To build the Juce library itself, there are project files for XCode, VC6, Visual Studio Express, etc. in the juce/build directory.

To compile an application that links to the library, you can either look at the projects in the demo application, or there are some basic 'hello world' projects in the juce/projects directory.

More detailed documentation about setting up the build environment for specific compilers is included in the juce/docs directory of the source-tree.

Quick overview of the main classes

Source Tree Structure

The JUCE tree is split into two main sections - "core" classes, and "application framework" classes. The core classes are basic building blocks that could be used on their own by any application - strings, containers, files, streams, etc. The application framework classes handle the event-loops, user interface, audio, imaging, etc., and are designed for use within a dedicated JUCE application. The core classes don't rely on any classes in the application framework, but those in the app framework use the core classes extensively.

I'd like to think that JUCE is a pretty easy library to learn your way around - the best way to learn it is probably to look through the demo code, and browse the API documentation. Here's a breakdown of the important classes to know about...

Core classes

Some of the more important classes in the "core" section are:

• String - a powerful, reference-counted string class that the whole library uses.
• Array, OwnedArray, StringArray, etc. - a collection of array classes.
• File - represents a file or directory and has many methods for searchng, copying, reading/writing etc.
• InputStream and OutputStream - streaming classes, and their various subclasses for reading/writing to memory, files, gzipping, etc.
• SystemStats - for easy access to information about the operating system, CPU, memory, etc.
• Time and RelativeTime - take care of all your date/time needs
• Random - random number generator class.
• MathsFunctions.h and DataConversions.h - these files contain functions for finding min/max values, converting endianness, rounding floating point numbers, and lots more useful numerical helper functions.
• MemoryBlock - a class to allocate and resize/manipulate a block of memory. Much neater and more powerful than doing a malloc() when you need a block of memory to work with.
• Singleton.h - this file contains macros for implementing a thread-safe singleton class.
• Logger - this class lets you define a custom application-wide logger object.
• ReferenceCountedObject - a base class for objects that are reference counted, to be used along with the ReferenceCountedPtr smart pointer object.
• XmlDocument and XmlElement - for parsing XML into a tree of XmlElements, which can be easily manipulated and turned back into a text document. The XmlElement class is actually quite a powerful object for storing data structures in its own right, even if it doesn't need to be externalised.
• Thread - allows a thread to be started/stopped, etc.
• CriticalSection and ScopedLock - critical section handling.
• WaitableEvent - for allowing threads to wait/signal each other.
• Process - controls the application's process, allowing its priority to be adjusted, etc.

Application Framework classes

Some important app-framework classes to be aware of are:

• JUCEApplication - this class wraps the startup and shutdown code for an application.
• Component - the base class for all user-interface objects. A component can either be a lightweight component inside another one, or can be placed on the desktop.
• Various widget classes in juce/src/juce_appframework/gui/gui_components/widgets - these include list-boxes, treeviews, scrollbars, drop-down lists, text editors, drag-and-drop support, etc.
• LookAndFeel - a class that controls the way various widgets are drawn, allowing custom look-and-feel styles to be applied to components.
• MouseCursor - for choosing either a built-in cursor, or creating a cursor from an image.
• MouseListener, MouseEvent - provides powerful mouse handling.
• KeyPress - represents a key-press including modifier keys, etc.
• PopupMenu - easy creation of pop-up contextual menus.
• AlertWindow - for popping up message windows, e.g. ok/cancel boxes, etc.
• MessageManager, Message, MessageListener - basic event-handling classes for sending asynchronous events via a platform-independent message queue.
• Timer - allows a class to be called back repeatedly at a given time interval.
• ActionListener, ActionBroadcaster, ChangeListener, ChangeBroadcaster - for sending/receiving various types of change events.
• Graphics - this class is a graphics context, used for drawing the contents of a component.
• Colour - wrapper class to represent a colour, with transparency.
• Image - a 24-bit bitmap, optionally with an alpha-channel.
• ImageFileFormat and ImageCache - for creating Image objects from jpeg, png, or gif data.
• Path - a shape defined by straight lines or quadratic/cubic bezier curves, which can be manipulated and drawn.
• Point, Line, Rectangle, RectangleList, AffineTransform - various geometry classes
• Font - represents a font with a specific height, style, kerning, aspect ratio, etc.
• Brush - different brush types are used by a graphics context to fill regions; this allows drawing of colour gradients, tiled images, or customised brush fills.
• ImageEffectFilter - performs a filtering operation on an image. These can also be applied to a component to create easy drop-shadows, glows, etc.
• Desktop - provides information about the desktop, including the position of multi-monitor setups.
• DeletedAtShutdown - objects derived from this class will be automatically cleared up before the application finishes.
• UndoManager - allows undo/redo support to be added to an object using a set of UndoCommand objects.
• AudioIODevice - controls an audio I/O device, allowing multi-channel input and output.
• AudioSource - an audio-processing node, of which there are various types like a ResamplingAudioSource, AudioFormatReaderSource, etc.
• AudioSampleBuffer - a multi-channel buffer for storing/mixing/manipulating audio samples.
• AudioStreamPlayer - controls playback of an audio file or other source.
• AudioFormat - base class for audio format codecs, e.g. WavAudioFormat, AiffAudioFormat, AudioCDReader.
• MidiMessage, MidiFile - for reading/writing and manipulating midi files and events.
• MidiOutput, MidiInput - allow use of any available hardware MIDI i/o ports.