Tabula Chess

Tabula Chess is a Java library which provides a convenient chess board Swing component. Tabula does not handle any chess rules or algorithms in order to provide reuse for any application which requires a chessboard. The client using Tabula is notified when a piece is moved and is given a chance to veto the move if it violates any rules of the chess variant being played.

Tabula Chess is released under the open source MIT license.

• Multiple piece sets.
• Accepts user-supplied piece sets.
• Configurable square colors.
• Board and pieces scale to the available space.
• Client callbacks on piece movement; client may veto the move.
• Set a board position using a FEN string.
• Get the current board position at any time as a FEN string.
• Simple to use and integrate into your chess application.

The Tabula Chess libary is meant to be easy to use. Clients of this library create a new instance of a ChessBoardContext, configure it, then retrieve a JComponent to embed in a Swing GUI. Through the MoveListener interface, the client is given a record of moves played on the board as well as the opportunity to veto any illegal moves.

	     1 final ChessBoardContext context = new ChessBoardContext();
	     2 context.setMoveListener(new MoveListener() {
	     3     @Override
	     4     public boolean acceptMove(Chessman piece, Coordinate source, Coordinate destination) {
	     5         System.out.printf("Moving %s %s from %s to %s %n",
	     6                             piece.getColor(), piece.getPieceType(), source, destination);
	     7         return true;
	     8     }
	     9 })
	    10     .setPositionFEN("rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1")
	    11     .setColors(Color.BLACK, Color.WHITE)
	    12     .setPieceImageSet(PieceSets.ARIAL);
	  

• Handle castling manouvers.
• Handle pawn promotion.
• Provide a position setup palette.
• Furnish image backgrounds for squares; provide a default set and a mechanism for client-supplied square backgrounds.
• Provide a nicer looking default set of piece images.
• Provide a mechanism to highlight squares.
• Provide a mechanism to draw on the board (e.g. arrows).

We would especially like someone with a graphics background to contribute some nice looking piece sets and square background images. Anyone interested in development of the library are also welcome. Contact us if you are interested -- we'd love to hear from you.