Creating multiple objects from a class in a loop... how do I refer to each object?

Question

I'm working on a Java program where I can keep track of my employee payroll. There are two types of employees, hourly and salary.

I have a while loop asking for the input and creating the objects so that I can add as many or as few employees as I want.

When I create my object from my class, I simply use:

HourlyEmployee employee = new HourlyEmployee(type, name, hours, rate);

However, if this is in a while loop, will I be creating several instances of the class type HourlyEmployee with the same name "employee"? Does it even matter if they have the same name (I just want to display the information for each employee on the screen later).

If so, how do I write my code so that the name of each HourlyEmployee object is dynamic as well?

Thanks!

Let me know if you guys want the rest of the code.

NPE · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-30 17:50:05Z

5

The way to do it is to put all Employee objects into a collection.

A good starting point is this tutorial.

answered May 30, 2012 at 17:50

NPE

503k114 gold badges970 silver badges1k bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Comment

Huy Over a year ago

Thanks for the guide. Collection will def work better than array in my case.

dshapiro · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-30 17:51:26Z

2

Yes, you will be create several HourlyEmployee objects with the name "employee". As this question sounds a little homework-y, I won't give an example, but I will recommend that you investigate making an array of HourlyEmployee objects.

answered May 30, 2012 at 17:51

dshapiro

1,09716 silver badges25 bronze badges

4 Comments

dshapiro Over a year ago

In the future, when you ask homework questions on SO, you should use the "homework" tag. If you don't, some people will view it as dishonest and downvote your question.

Huy Over a year ago

My apologies. Will add it now and on future posts. Ty.

Huy Over a year ago

It seems like when you create an array of HourlyEmployee, the number of employees cannot be dynamic because you have to declare the size.

dshapiro Over a year ago

True. I should have said "ArrayList" or "Collection" instead of "Array".

Kumar Vivek Mitra · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-30 18:21:04Z

0

Try this,

Create an abstract class called Employee,
Then 2 concrete classes HourlyEmployee and SalaryEmployee.
Use ArrayList to store the employees, having same names wont create a clash, but Map would have been a better option where u can have Ids as unique keys to identify employees even though they have same names.

Eg:

public void addEmp(Employee employee){

ArrayList<? extends Employee> emp;

 while(true){   // Use a boolean variable to terminate the loop at certain conditions

    for (Employee e : emp) {

        e.add(employee);


     }

}

answered May 30, 2012 at 18:21

Kumar Vivek Mitra

33.5k6 gold badges50 silver badges75 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Creating multiple objects from a class in a loop... how do I refer to each object?

3 Answers 3

1 Comment

4 Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

3 Answers 3

1 Comment

4 Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related