I am currently just getting into Web services as it is new to me. I have put together a sample one returning animal type.
public class AnimalTypeService {
public String animalType(String animal) {
String animalType = "";
if ("Lion".equals(animal)) {
animalType = "Wild";
} else if ("Dog".equals(animal)) {
animalType = "Domestic";
} else {
animalType = "I don't know!";
}
return animalType;
}
}
However, I would now like to take several string/parameters. For instance someone who enters in a name, lastname, age, birthday. Can someone give me an example on how I could take in a set of parameters such as these and write them into a xml doc format?
For taking in multiple parameters you have three options:
1) You could create a class (human for example), which contains the instance variables name last name, age, and birthday.
2) You could pass in the parameters as an ArrayList or as an Array. However, you then have to be careful that the ordering of the parameters fits what you need (so that you don't read in a last name as a birthday for example).
3) You can pass in the parameters as a map, with a key being "name" and a value being "steve" for example. Then the method could search for certain keys and find the values associated with those keys.
In regards to writing them into an xml doc format, i would suggest looking up DOM objects, as they make writing xml docs very simple. http://www.mkyong.com/java/how-to-create-xml-file-in-java-dom/ provides a great tutorial/example
Related
I'm currently doing an intro level undergrad CS course (learning basics of 'program'&'class' building using Java).
The relevant part of my personal (&job related) project: I have a list of zip codes associated with One county.
I'm gonna define a class called 'County'. Then I'm gonna use this class to construct an object of type County, called 'middlesex'.
ie: County middlesex = new County();
Now, in this object, I want to construct a number of objects of class-type ZipCode.
ie: ZipCode objName = new ZipCode();
(Each such ZipCode object is gonna contain certain instance data).
My problem is this. Assume that I don't know how many zipcodes are contained in the Middlesex county. However, I have a .txt file that contains just a list of all the zipcodes of Middlesex county.
Let's say there are n number of zipcodes in this list.
In the object 'middlesex', of class-type 'County', I want to set up a loop. This loop will scan each zipcode in the list, then construct an object of class-type ZipCode for each zipcode.
Thus the loop may go thru n iterations, and construct n objects of type ZipCode.
Thus, for every iteration of the loop, a unique object-reference-name must be created (corresponding to the particular zipcode in the list).
Part of this problem (but distinct and optional), is that I want to know how (if possible), I can set up a structure that allows an inputted (scanned) string to be used as the name of an object-reference.
I apologize if I've made incorrect terminology use. I know that many are gonna suggest arrays. I haven't learned about them yet, but I gotta read about them over this weekend for school. I'm just gonna try to figure this out for a day or two, and then just move on to using arrays to perform this task.
So, if I've made any sense to anyone, is what I'm trying to do possible without arrays?
Thank u.
You're describing a very basic scenario, one where one object contains (possibly) many references to objects of a 2nd type, what we call a constructor called "composition" where the relationship here is a "has-a" relationship, County has-a (or has-many) zip codes
As opposed to using inheritance to wrongly try to solve this, the "inheritance" relationship or the "is-a" relationship -- County is not a zip code and zip code is not a county.
The code to create this can be very simple, something like:
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
public class County {
private String name;
private List<String> zipCodes = new ArrayList<>();
// constructor that takes county name
public County(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
public void addZipCode(String code) {
zipCodes.add(code);
}
// ..... more code
If a zip code is a single String, then no need to create a new class for this. If however it is more complex and holds more data than a single String, then create a class for ZipCode, and change the code above to something like
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
public class County {
private String name;
private List<ZipCode> zipCodes = new ArrayList<>();
// constructor that takes county name
public County(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
public void addZipCode(ZipCode code) {
zipCodes.add(code);
}
// getters, setters, a decent toString method override...
Where ZipCode could contain....
public class ZipCode {
String code;
// other fields if needed....
public ZipCode(String code) {
this.code = code;
}
// ....
then when reading in data, create your County objects and as each Zip code is read in, add it to the appropriate County object using the addZipCode(...) method.
zipCode is an object of Type ZipCode then what are its fields? Think of the reasons for making it an object and not a variable
"Thus the loop may go thru n iterations, and construct n objects of type ZipCode"
Unforutnality this is not possible without making the use of Arrays
"structure that allows an inputted (scanned) string to be used as the name of an object"
Nope can do that.
I created a class and made 57 objects from it, each one has specific ID number.
Can I create a method which returns an object using an ID as the argument?
For example, assume the name of my class is Things and I made two object from it called apple and dog, they have IDs 1 and 2.
Things.java:
class Things {
private String name;
private int ID;
public Things(String name, int ID) {
this.name = name;
this.ID = ID;
}
}
Main.java:
class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Things apple = new Things("apple", 1);
Things dog = new Things("dog", 2);
}
}
in this example I want to create a method in class "Things" which returns object apple if I use 1 as argument and object dog if I use 2 .
You cannot identify objects by a particular property unless you store it in a special repository
You can create a ThingRepository and can get specific Things by the id.
public class ThingRepository {
private Map<Integer, Things> thingsRepository = new HashMap<>();
public void addThing(int id, Things things) {
thingsRepository.put(id, things);
}
public Things getThingById(int id) {
return thingsRepository.get(id); //Can return null if not present
}
}
The addThing method need not explicitly take the id. If you add a getter to Things, then it can be simplified to
public void addThing(Things things) {
thingsRepository.put(things.getId(), things);
}
Couple of problems you need to address:
Each created Things object has to be added to this somehow (either the caller needs to add or there must be some other wrapper/factory that must do this).
Once a Things is not needed, it must be removed from the above map, else it can lead to memory leak.
Btw, shouldn't Things be named as just a Thing?
There are two aspects here:
you need some sort of data structure that remembers about created objects, and allows you to access them by id, for example a simple Map<Integer, Things>. Each time you create a new Things (should better be called Thing, shouldn't it?!), you go thatMap.put(newId, newThing).
if you want that data to "survive", you would have to somehow persist it (like writing data to a file, database, ...)
If you use Intellij for example press: alt + insert and choose getters/setter.
If not just write your own getters/setter ;).
Like here: https://docs.oracle.com/javaee/6/tutorial/doc/gjbbp.html
But basically if you want to look for Thing with particular Id you need to store somewhere them for example in ArrayList, then iterate through it and if your find element with that Id just return it.
1) Create new ArrayList
2) Iterate through
3) If you find Thing with Id you want, return it.
I am trying to learn some foundational ways to manipulate certain aspects of coding that stray away from single use and make something more "dynamic" that can kind of build itself on the fly.
For example of what I would like to accomplish, which I believe would consist of using some type of empty array of an object and a loop. I just don't know how to write it.
Lets keep it basic and say I have a Person Class.
public class Person
{
String name;
String age;
}
So in my TestDrive I would just get a simple user input to gather information on that person.
Such as...
import javax.swing.JOptionPane;
public class PersonTestDrive
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
String name;
String age;
name = JOptionPane.showInputDialog(null, "Enter your name");
age = JOptionPane.showInputDialog(null, "Enter your age");
Person human = new Person();
human.name = name;
human.age = age;
JOptionPane.showInputDialog(null, "Would you like add another entry?");
/* At this point it would loop if the user wanted to add another entry.
I would just wrap it all in while loop that just checked if the user said yes or no.
However, if they do choose to add another entry
"IF" a human object already existed it would create a
new human2 object, and then human3, etc. */
}
}
It sounds that all you need is a collection of objects, such as ArrayList<Person>.
"human" is a name of your variable, and at compile time you don't know how many other variables there can be so you cannot refer to them in the code using "human2", "human3" and so on. You can create these variables, but they may be nulls and your input will also be limited to how many variables you have. Another problem would be keeping track of what variable to assign to next.
With List<Person> list you can do list.get(2) to get third object (it will thrown an exception if there are few than 3) or list.size() to check how many objects were created so far.
Here is some more information about Java collections: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/collections/
I need to serialize a couple of objects in my Android app and send them to web service.
The model classes for objects have various int fields which need to be converted into meaningful string representations from various arrays before sending to web service.
So, I am assuming that easiest way will be to use gson or xstream (JSON or XML - anything is fine) but with following method:
- I'll mark all existing int fields as transient and exclude them from serialization
- I'll create new get method per field. The get method will read value of corresponding integer and return its string representation.
But in either of 2 libraries - gson or xstream, I am unable to find way to serialize based on getters instead of fields. Please suggest.
And yes, I DO NOT need to deserialize the data back.
I think you need a wrapper class.
Consider this:
public class Blammy
{
private int gender;
... imagine the rest of the class.
}
public class BlammyWrapper
{
private String gender;
public BlammyWrapper(final Blammy blammy)
{
if (blammy.gender == 1)
{
gender = "Its a Boy";
}
else if (blammy.gender == 2)
{
gender = "girl";
}
else // always check your boundary conditions.
{
throw new InvalidArgumentException("Naughty blammy; unrecognized gender value");
}
public String gender()
{
return gender;
}
}
Ok, finally, I followed this approach:
1. Removed all resource arrays from my app code
2. Added enums with toString for each current array
3. Changed all int properties to be of corresponding enum type
4. Used XStream
5. Added a custom convertor for XStream for generic enum types where if it finds any property of type enum, then it will marshal it using toString method.
Thanks for all support btw. All your answers and comments atleast made me clear that my current code architecture needed drastic improvement.
My professor wants us to make an enum called MedicalSpecialty, with GENERAL_MEDICINE, PEDIATRICS, and ONCOLOGY as members of the enumeration (so far so good).
Then he wants us to define a method called getFromString inside the MedicalSpecialty enum "that takes a String parameter and returns a MedicalSpecialty with the same name as the String parameter"
I'm not sure what he means, but then he says:
"Hint: use the toString() method from the MedicalSpecialty enum to perform your checks"
I'm not looking for a solution, but rather an explanation of what he is asking, if anyone understands. Is the getFromString method meant to take in a String like "general_medicine" and then output "GENERAL_MEDICINE" as type MedicalSpecialty? That seems useless and probably wrong...
Any help would be appreciated!
You have the right idea. Think of it this way:
Suppose you are designing a system that works with components that function across the globe and you use the internet to communicate between them. A component in Europe, wants to request a new doctor of Oncology to be transferred from the US component. It can't send a MedicalSpeciality enum over the wire, so instead it sends a String, e.g. "Oncology". Now, in the code of your US component, you want to translate that piece of text to something that your US component system understand: the enum.
You need to write a method that takes the input String sent over the wire and returns the corresponding Enum value.
He means that valid input for your function will be the following:
"GENERAL_MEDICINE", "PEDIATRICS", "ONCOLOGY"
Your task is to convert the type String to the type Enum.
He probably wants you to show that you know how to loop through all the elements of an enum and compare each toString result to the passed in string.
You're right, that's not the best way to do it.
public enum Medicine {
GENERAL_MEDICINE("general_medicine"),
PEDIATRICS("pediatrics");
private final String value;
Medicine(String v) {
value = v;
}
public String value() {
return value;
}
public static Medicine fromString(String v) {
for (Medicine c : Medicine.values()) {
if (c.value.equals(v)) {
return c;
}
}
throw new IllegalArgumentException(v);
}
}