Referencing classes and variables

[shuzo monsoon]

Hello all, I have written a class called BasketItems, which basically stores the title, artist, price and quantity of an item. Then another class - ShoppingBasket is used to store an instance of the basketItems class in a vector. However, the vector itself is not instantiated until a user adds an item (through a JSP page) to the basket, in which case a process request method should add the product to the vector. I am having some trouble in specifying that if the product is already present, then the quantity should be incremented. Here are the 2 classes -

BASKET ITEMS CLASS
public class BasketItem {
String product = null;
String artist = null;
float price = 0;
int quantity = 0;

public BasketItem(String product_, String artist_, float price_) {
product = product_;
artist = artist_;
price = price_;
quantity = 1;
}
public String getTitle() {
return product;
}
public String getArtist() {
return artist;
}
public float getPrice() {
return price;
}
public int getQuantity() {
return quantity;
}
public void setQuantity(int quantity_) {
quantity = quantity_;
}
public void addToItemQuantity(int q) {
quantity += q;
}
}
SHOPPING BASKET CLASS
package catalogue;
import java.util.*;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
public class ShoppingBasket extends Object {
private Vector basket = null;
String product = null;
String submit = null;

public ShoppingBasket() {
basket = new Vector();
}
public void setProduct(String product) {
this.product = product;
}
public void setSubmit(String submit) {
this.submit = submit;
}
public Vector getProducts() {
return basket;
}
public void addProduct(String product) {
basket.add(product);
}
public void removeProduct(String product) {
basket.remove(product);
}
public void processRequest(HttpServletRequest req) {
if(submit!=null) {
if(submit.equals("Add")) {

BasketItem item = null;
boolean added = false;
for(int i=0;i<products.size();i++) {
item = (BasketItem)products.get(i);
if(item.getTitle().equals(product)) {
((BasketItem)products.get(i)).addToItemQuantity(1);

added = true;
break;
}
if(!added) {
addProduct(product);
}
}
}
}
else if(submit.equals("remove")) {
removeProduct(product);
}
else {
reset();
}
}
public void reset() {
submit = null;
product = null;
}
}
Teh problem I have is that I have used "products.get(i)" for example which is actually a reference to the vector created on the JSP page.
I hope this isn't too confusing and that someone can try and help!
Thanks.

[Jeroen Wenting]

What's going wrong here?
My guess is you're getting a NullPointerException because the Vector is not instantiated?
If so, instantiate the Vector instead of iterating over it (as you know it'll be empty...