Let's build a schedule!

Since I don't receive a ready-made schedule from my university and have to put it together myself in painstaking work (a catastrophe!), I have decided to build a program that creates my schedule for me. It evaluates the schedules based on certain criteria, for example, the time needed from one location to another, and provides the best possible schedule.

Usage

You can find a usable JAR-file here. Create a CSV file, let's call it timetable.csv. It will contain all the possible courses you can take.

Here is an example: Let's say you study to become a teacher for computer science and philosophy and you want to create the timetable for your third semester. But because the logic courses in philsophy and computer science overlap in the first semester, you now have to take Theoretical Philosophy 1, Teaching Philosohy, Software Engineering, and Logic.

1. Courses

The course catalog shows all the modules that you can attend to, so look them up. After you collected your possible courses, put them into the CSV-file like this:

COURSE,<type>,<name>,<day>,<starts>,<ends>,<location>

type: you can specify later how many courses of this type should be added to your schedule. If you have to attend to 3 seminars and 6 seminars are provided, put all of the 6 into one category.
name: name of the course
day: German 2-letter name of the day of the week
starts: hour it starts in 24-hour format (1,2,3,4,...,21,22,23,24)
ends: hour the course ends
location: shortcut of the location, more on this later

COURSE,A,[Ph/CC] Kompaktkurs Sprachphilosophie,Mo,13,15,U69
COURSE,A,[Ph/CC] Kompaktkurs Erkenntnistheorie,Di,15,17,UHG

COURSE,B,[Ph/S] Logik II: Leibniz,Do,13,16,P6
COURSE,B,[Ph/S] Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft,Mo,19,21,ABT
COURSE,B,[Ph/S] Kritische Theorie,Di,13,15,ABT
COURSE,B,[Ph/S] Max Stirner: Der Einzige und sein Eigentum,Di,11,13,ABT
COURSE,B,[Ph/S] All-inclusive? Das Gott-Welt-Verhältnis im Panentheismus (T),Mi,11,13,P6

COURSE,C,[Ph/FD] Fachdidaktik,Fr,11,13,UHG
COURSE,C,[Ph/FD] Fachdidaktik,Mo,11,13,UHG

COURSE,D,[Inf/SV] Softwaretechnik,Di,9,11,P6

COURSE,E,[Inf/SÜ] Softwaretechnik,Di,11,13,AE22
COURSE,E,[Inf/SÜ] Softwaretechnik,Mo,9,11,AE22
COURSE,E,[Inf/SÜ] Softwaretechnik,Do,15,17,AE22
COURSE,E,[Inf/SÜ] Softwaretechnik,Fr,13,15,AE22

COURSE,F,[Inf/LV] Logik,Do,11,13,P6
COURSE,F,[Inf/LV] Logik,Fr,9,11,P6

COURSE,G,[Inf/LÜ] Logik,Mi,7,9,AE22
COURSE,G,[Inf/LÜ] Logik,Di,15,17,AE22
COURSE,G,[Inf/LÜ] Logik,Di,17,19,AE22
COURSE,G,[Inf/LÜ] Logik,Mo,11,13,AE22

2. Locations

Define how long you need from one location to another. Here we have:

UHG = Universitätsplatz 1
P6 = Parkstraße 6
AE22 = Albert-Einstein-Str. 22
ABT = August-Bebel-Str. 28
U69 = Ulmenstraße 69

The syntax is:

LOC,<nameA>,<nameB>,<time>

The time can be optimistic, or pessimistic. How long you need from nameA to nameB can vary, so maybe being pessimistic is not that bad.

LOC,UHG,ABT,10
LOC,AE22,UHG,35
LOC,AE22,ABT,35
LOC,U69,ABT,25
LOC,U69,AE22,20
LOC,U69,UHG,25
LOC,P6,U69,5
LOC,P6,UHG,20
LOC,P6,ABT,25
LOC,P6,AE22,20

3. Obligations

Now define what courses you have to take:

According to our study regulation, we'd have to take 1×Ph/CC, 2×Ph/S, 1×Ph/FD, 1×Inf/SV, 1×Inf/SÜ, 1×Inf/LV, 1×Inf/LÜ:

CHOOSE,A,1
CHOOSE,B,2
CHOOSE,C,1
CHOOSE,D,1
CHOOSE,E,1
CHOOSE,F,1
CHOOSE,G,1

Generate the timetable

Collecting the data is time consuming, but more efficient than putting the timetable together by yourself. After everything, run the program and use timetable.csv as the first argument:

java -jar scheduler.java timetable.csv