ArrayLists and Objects.

[Ben Jones]

Ok, after a *long* holiday I'm back at uni' and I've got a little Java assignment to do. I need to some classes called Cashier, OrderList and Cook (Although I'm not really concerned with Cook at the moment.) The idea is that the Cashier has a name, and when she creates an order their name, the time of the order and the order number are adding to the ArrayList. This is what I have so far:

Cashier.java

   
import java.text.DateFormat;

public class Cashier implements Runnable {
	
	String cashierName;
	DateFormat time = DateFormat.getDateInstance(DateFormat.SHORT);
	int orderNum = 0;
	
	public Cashier(String name)
	{
		cashierName = name;
	}
	
	public void run() 
	{
		
	}
	
	public void createOrder()
	{
		orderNum += 1;
		OrderList order1 = new OrderList(cashierName,time, orderNum);
		OrderList.addOrder(order1);
	}
	
	public static void main(String [] args)
	{
		Cashier cashierOne = new Cashier("John");
		cashierOne.createOrder();
		OrderList.retrieveOrder();
		
	}
}

OrderList.java

 
import java.text.DateFormat;
import java.util.ArrayList;

public class OrderList {
	
	String cashierName;
	DateFormat time;
	int orderNum;
	
	private static ArrayList<OrderList> orders = new ArrayList<OrderList>();
	
		public OrderList(String name,DateFormat date, int order)
		{
			cashierName = name;
                        time = orderTime;
			orderNum = order;
		}
		
		public static void addOrder(OrderList order)
		{
			orders.add(order);
		}
		
		public static void retrieveOrder()
		{
			System.out.println(orders.get(0));
		}
				
}
 

Sorry if I'm doing something really obviously wrong. I know something isn't right because I don't think anything actually gets added to the array, when I run this code I get something like "OrderList@38a97b0b".

P.s. I've made this use the Runnable interface because eventually I will be using a thread to add order a new order every ~5 secs.

[David Newton]

You're printing out the default toString() representation of an OrderList--that's just what it looks like.

For me the more immediate issue is naming: An OrderList isn't a list. It's an Order. I also question keeping the *actual* order list as a static member in the OrderList class, but for your purposes it's probably just fine.

[Ben Jones]

So are you saying I'd be better off with a class called Order that creates the Order object, etc, and adds it to the OrderList class?

[David Newton]

"Better off" is subjective. But no; I'm saying you'd be better off with an Order class, and a list of those orders (currently static in your class, which is, again, probably just fine for what you're doing).