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Java android multidimensional array (hash maybe) with string and nested class

I'm trying to track class stats for an android game I'm working on.
public static class characterClasses {
public String class_name;
public int base_hp;
public int base_attack;
public float base_defense;
}
I want to access these directly by name so I won't have to iterate over them repeatedly. From my research it looks like a hashmap or map would be what I need but everything I've seen is only for a single key/value pair. I need to access each stat value directly by class and value, something like
classList.get("warrior").get("base_hp");
Can someone point me in the right direction?

You are correct to think of using HashMap. You can use the characterClass String names as keys and the characterClasses as values. You can then use your getter methods to access your specific fields i.e.
classList.get("warrior").getBase_HP();
You could also forget maps entirely since these stats seem constant by using inheritance
public class Character {
int hp;
int attack;
int defense;
public Character (int hp, int attack, int defense) {
this.hp = hp;
this.attack = attack;
this.defense = defense;
}
public int getHP() {
return hp;
}
...
}
For your Character subclasses, you can preset those values in the constructor
public class Warrior extends Character {
public Warrior() {
super(2, 10, 8);
}
public int getHP() {
return super.getHP();
}
}
public class Wizard extends Character {
public Wizard() {
super(10, 3, 1);
}
public int getHP() {
return super.getHP();
}
}
This way all your Warrior and Wizard Objects will have the same stats that can be accessed any time simply by invoking their getters.

Compilation error with ENUM class

sorry for asking such basic question. I am trying some hands on ENUM. below is my code. I am getting some compilation error . Any idea where is the problem. I want SAMPLEMAIL,BULKUSERS,ALLUSERS should be of integer type.
public enum EmailSendingOption {
SAMPLEMAIL, BULKUSERS, ALLUSERS;
private int emailSendingOptionType;
private EmailSendingOption(String optionType) {
int value = Integer.parseInt(optionType.trim());
emailSendingOptionType = value;
}
public int getEmailSendingOption() {
return emailSendingOptionType;
}
}
thanks.

You have defined a constructor but you haven't supplied arguments for each of your Enums.
Looks like your constructor should take an integer too. Saves having to parse a String each time. It's also safer.
e.g.
SAMPLEMAIL(10), etc.
With your constructor looking like:
private int emailSendingOptionType;
private EmailSendingOption(int optionType) {
this.emailSendingOptionType = optionType;
}

You need to make it like this:
public enum EmailSendingOption {
SAMPLEMAIL("1"), BULKUSERS("2"), ALLUSERS("3");
private int emailSendingOptionType;
private EmailSendingOption(String optionType) {
int value = Integer.parseInt(optionType.trim());
emailSendingOptionType = value;
}
public int getEmailSendingOption() {
return emailSendingOptionType;
}
}

enum are not integers in Java, they are objects. There is no sane reason you would pass an integer as a String to a constructor so it can be parsed into an integer. If you want an integer use an integer.
public enum EmailSendingOption {
SAMPLEMAIL(1), BULKUSERS(2), ALLUSERS(101);
private final int emailSendingOptionType;
private EmailSendingOption(int emailSendingOptionType) {
this.emailSendingOptionType = emailSendingOptionType;
}
public int getEmailSendingOption() {
return emailSendingOptionType;
}
}

Since you are providing a custom constructor to your Enum
EmailSendingOption(String optionType)
You need to add those parameter for each Enum constant.

Change it to:
public enum EmailSendingOption
{
SAMPLEMAIL("String"), BULKUSERS("String"), ALLUSERS("String");
...
}
You defined a constructor as needed a String as argument. SAMPLEMAIL this are a static object
of EmailSendingOption.

Using constants across the application

I have few constant values which I refer across my application. I am creating a class something like below snippet.
public class Styles {
public static final String tableStyle = "TableGrid";
public static final String fontFamily = "Calibri";
public static final String headerStyle = "Heading2";
public static final String footerStyle = "Heading3";
public static final String tableHeaderStyle = "Heading1";
public static final String tableDataFontFamily = "Cambria";
public static final int tableHeaderFontSize = 16;
public static final int tableDataFontSize = 12;
}
I am assigning the values in it and I am referring them like Styles.headerStyle . My doubt is, is this the good way or is there any better approach to achieve this? something like Enum ?
Thanks in advance.

It depends on the nature of your application, in most cases it is not a good practice to have a collection of constants in that way, but it is difficult to tell without knowing the context of your application. BTW, are sure that you'll never (or almost never) change things like "fontFamily"?
Of course an enum would be a little less verbose and more functional:
public enum Styles {
TABLE_STYLE("TableGrid"),
FONT_FAMILY("Calibri"),
HEADER_STYLE("Heading2"),
FOOTER_STYLE("Heading3"),
TABLE_HEADER_STYLE("Heading1"),
TABLE_DATA_FONT_FAMILY("Cambria"),
TABLE_HEADER_FONT_SIZE("16"),
TABLE_DATA_FONT_SIZE("12");
private String value;
private Styles(String value) {
this.value = value;
}
public String getStringValue() {
return value;
}
public int getIntValue() {
return Integer.valueOf(value);
}
}

1) You can use an external file as a Property File.
2) You can use an enum as #morgano answer
3) I would change your class declaration to
public final class Styles { // final class can't have childs
private Styles(){} // you cannot instanciate
public static final String tableStyle = "TableGrid";
.
.
.
}

Using wild cards with static classes in java

The idea I'm going for is that I have a bunch of actions/functions that happen in our program. They're all predefined and separated into categories. So there might be a category for admin actions that then defines a bunch of static codes for actions that are in the admin actions category.
Since the categories and actions are fixed, they're all in static classes.
These static category classes all implement an interface, ICategory:
public static interface ICategory{
int getCateogory();
String getCategoryName();
String getFunctionName(int function);
}
Each of these static classes is added to a static Map:
private static Map<Integer, Class<? extends ICategory>> catMap = new HashMap<Integer, Class<? extends ICategory>>();
Basically there's an integer code associated with each category. What I'm trying to do is just made a human readable string that I can print out when I receive the category and action codes. What I would like to do is something like
ICategory whatever = catMap.get(catNumber);
System.out.println(whatever.getCategoryName());
System.out.println(whatever.getFunctionName(actionCode));
So catMap.get(catNumber) will actually return the proper static class, but I then don't know how I can use that returned class to access these static methods. I can do it with regular instances of a class, just fine, but doing it with static classes has got me puzzled.
Clarification of Problem:
Some Clarification of The problem I'm trying to solve in case you guys have suggestions of better / more intuitive ways to do this:
Basically I'm interpreting commands from some piece of custom hardware at my company. It's a little data collection gizmo that has a bunch of predefined messages/functions that I have to interpret.
These functions are split into various categories: Display, Keypad, Acquisition, etc.
So basically I have a mapping like this:
Display Category: 128
ShowGraph: 01
ShowText: 02
Keypad Category: 129
F1: 01
F2: 02
MenuKey: 03
I'm making a little stream display that prints the stream of commands out in human readable format. So I'd just print out a big list of something like
Got Category Display, Function ShowGraph
Got Category Keypad, Function MenuKey
Normally I'd use a map for this, but what I want is to also use the functions in each category as constants because I'll have to reference them in if-statements and often times send those same categories back to the little gizmo.
For Instance:
sendMessage(Categories.DisplayCategory.getCategoryInt(), Categories.DisplayCategory.SHOW_GRAPH);
More Code as requested:
public class Functions {
public static interface ICategory{
int getCateogory();
String getCategoryName();
String getFunctionName(int function);
}
private static Map<Integer, Class<? extends ICategory>> catMap = new HashMap<Integer, Class<? extends ICategory>>();
public static String getCategoryString(int category) {
Class<? extends ICategory> clazz = catMap.get(category);
System.out.println(catMap.toString());
if(clazz != null){
try{
Method m = clazz.getMethod("getCategoryName", Integer.class);
return (String) m.invoke(0, category);
}catch (Exception e){
return null;
}
}else{
System.out.println("clazz was null");
return null;
}
}
public static class SystemKey implements ICategory{
public static int CATEGORY = 134;
private static Map<Integer, String> fmap = new HashMap<Integer, String>();
#Override
public int getCateogory() {
return CATEGORY;
}
#Override
public String getCategoryName() {
return "SystemKey";
}
#Override
public String getFunctionName(int function) {
return fmap.get(function);
}
}
public static class SystemCat implements ICategory{
public static int CATEGORY = 128;
private static Map<Integer, String> fmap = new HashMap<Integer, String>();
public static final int POWER_UP = 0x01;
public static final int END_OF_TRANSMIT = 0x02;
public static final int CLEAR_TO_SEND = 0x03;
public static final int NET_TEST = 0x05; /*Fom station to ctrlr*/
public static final int NET_OK = 0x06; /*Response to controller*/
public static final int MAIN_MENU = 0x07;
static{
catMap.put(CATEGORY, SystemCat.class);
fmap.put(POWER_UP, "POWER_UP");
fmap.put(END_OF_TRANSMIT, "END_OF_TRANSMIT");
fmap.put(CLEAR_TO_SEND, "CLEAR_TO_SEND");
fmap.put(NET_TEST, "NET_TEST");
fmap.put(NET_OK, "NET_OK");
fmap.put(MAIN_MENU, "MAIN_MENU");
}
#Override
public int getCateogory() {
return CATEGORY;
}
#Override
public String getCategoryName() {
return "System";
}
#Override
public String getFunctionName(int function) {
return fmap.get(function);
}
}
public static class SoftKey implements ICategory{
public static int CATEGORY = 129;
private static Map<Integer, String> fmap = new HashMap<Integer, String>();
public static final int F1 = 0x20;
public static final int F2 = 0x21;
public static final int F3 = 0x22;
public static final int F4 = 0x23;
public static final int F5 = 0x24;
static{
catMap.put(CATEGORY, SoftKey.class);
fmap.put(F1, "F1");
fmap.put(F2, "F2");
fmap.put(F3, "F3");
fmap.put(F4, "F4");
fmap.put(F5, "F5");
#Override
public int getCateogory() {
return CATEGORY;
}
#Override
public String getCategoryName() {
return "SoftKey";
}
#Override
public String getFunctionName(int function) {
return fmap.get(function);
}
}
public static void main (String[] args) throws Exception{
System.out.println(Functions.getCategoryString(128));
}
}

Update
As I suspected, the solution is quite simple. There are different ways to do this, here is one, I seem to remember calling it Registry, back in the days when Patterns were known as Idioms. You are almost there, what you need is following changes:
Change catMap type from Map<String,Class<? extends ICategory> to Map<Integer, ICategory>.
In the static initializers create an object and put it in the map, e.g.
public static class SoftKey implements ICategory{
....
static{
catMap.put(CATEGORY, new SoftKey());
In getCategoryString use the ICategory object in the registry:
ICategory categ = catMap.get(category);
return categ.getCategoyString()
I might have misunderstood the question, but part of it are confusing:
So catMap.get(catNumber) will actually return the proper static class,
By static class I assume you mean that the interfaces are nested inside some class/interface. There is no such thing as a top-level static class in Java. get returns an Object of a static class, not a class.
but I then don't know how I can use that returned class to access these static methods.
The methods you have declared are not static, they are instance methods
I can do it with regular instances of a class, just fine, but doing it with static classes has got me puzzled.
I am puzzled too. You can call instance methods on objects of static class. Can you post a complete code sample?

Assuming you know all the codes in advance, and there aren't 1000s of function values, this would work. The non-uniqueness of the function value codes isn't a problem as long as you don't mind looking through a container to find them (as opposed to a Map).
You could do away with the static maps completely if you don't mind looping through all the enum values all the time. This could be perfectly acceptable if you don't do lookups very often.
import java.util.EnumMap;
import java.util.EnumSet;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Set;
public enum FunctionCategory {
DISPLAY(128, "Display"),
KEYPAD(129, "KeyPad");
// more categories here...
private final int code;
private final String name;
private static Map<Integer, FunctionCategory> categoryMap = new HashMap<>();
static {
for( FunctionCategory c : FunctionCategory.values() ) {
categoryMap.put(c.getCode(), c);
}
}
// For looking up a category from its code
public static FunctionCategory fromCode( int code ) {
return categoryMap.get(code);
}
private FunctionCategory(int code, String name) {
this.code = code;
this.name = name;
}
public int getCode() {
return code;
}
public String getName() {
return name;
}
public static enum FunctionValue {
// DISPLAY
DISPLAY_GRAPH(DISPLAY, 1, "Graph"),
DISPLAY_TEXT(DISPLAY, 2, "ShowText"),
//KEYPAD
KEYPAD_MENU(KEYPAD, 1, "MenuKey"),
KEYPAD_ENTER(KEYPAD, 2, "EnterKey");
// TODO, others
private static Map<FunctionCategory, Set<FunctionValue>> codeMapping = new EnumMap<>( FunctionCategory.class );
static {
for( FunctionValue fv : FunctionValue.values() ) {
Set<FunctionValue> values = codeMapping.get(fv.getCategory());
if( values == null ) {
values = EnumSet.of(fv);
}
else {
values.add(fv);
}
codeMapping.put(fv.getCategory(), values);
}
}
// First we look up the category, then we just loop over all the values
// within that category. Unless you have lots of values, or really need
// to optimize the lookups, there is no need to do something more complex
public static FunctionValue getFromCodes( int categoryCode, int valueCode ) {
FunctionCategory c = FunctionCategory.fromCode(categoryCode);
if( c != null ) {
Set<FunctionValue> valueSet = codeMapping.get(c);
if( valueSet != null ) {
// Just spin through them, there aren't that many
for( FunctionValue v : valueSet ) {
if( v.getCode() == valueCode ) {
return v;
}
}
}
}
return null;
}
private final FunctionCategory category;
private final int code;
private final String name;
private FunctionValue(FunctionCategory category, int code, String name) {
this.category = category;
this.code = code;
this.name = name;
}
public FunctionCategory getCategory() {
return category;
}
public int getCode() {
return code;
}
public String getName() {
return name;
}
}
}

Alternative to enum in Java 1.4

Since Java 1.4 doesn't have enums I'm am doing something like this:
public class SomeClass {
public static int SOME_VALUE_1 = 0;
public static int SOME_VALUE_2 = 1;
public static int SOME_VALUE_3 = 2;
public void receiveSomeValue(int someValue) {
// do something
}
}
The caller of receiveSomeValue should pass one those 3 values but he can pass any other int.
If it were an enum the caller could only pass one valid value.
Should receiveSomeValue throw an InvalidValueException?
What are good alternatives to Java 5 enums?

Best to use in pre 1.5 is the Typesafe Enum Pattern best described in the book Effective Java by Josh Bloch. However it has some limitations, especially when you are dealing with different classloaders, serialization and so on.
You can also have a look at the Apache Commons Lang project and espacially the enum class, like John has written. It is an implementation of this pattern and supports building your own enums.

I'd typically create what I call a constant class, some thing like this:
public class MyConstant
{
public static final MyConstant SOME_VALUE = new MyConstant(1);
public static final MyConstant SOME_OTHER_VALUE = new MyConstant(2);
...
private final int id;
private MyConstant(int id)
{
this.id = id;
}
public boolean equal(Object object)
{
...
}
public int hashCode()
{
...
}
}
where equals and hashCode are using the id.

Apache Commons Lang has an Enum class that works well and pretty well covers what Java 5 Enums offer.

If the application code base is going to use lot of enums, then I would prefer following solution, which I have used in my application.
Base Class
public class Enum {
protected int _enumValue;
protected Enum(int enumValue) {
this._enumValue = enumValue;
}
public int Value() {
return this._enumValue;
}
}
Your enumerations will then follow these pattern
Actual Enum
public class DATE_FORMAT extends Enum {
public static final int DDMMYYYY = 1;
public static final int MMDDYYYY = 2;
public static final int YYYYMMDD = 3;
public DATE_FORMAT(int enumValue) {
super(enumValue);
}
}
And your code can consume this enum as follows
String getFormattedDate(DATE_FORMAT format) {
String sDateFormatted = "";
switch (format.Value()) {
case DATE_FORMAT.DDMMYYYY :
break;
case DATE_FORMAT.MMDDYYYY :
break;
case DATE_FORMAT.YYYYMMDD :
break;
default:
break;
}
return sDateFormatted;
}
Caller can use the function as
void callerAPI() {
DATE_FORMAT format = new DATE_FORMAT(DATE_FORMAT.DDMMYYYY);
String sFormattedDate = getFormattedDate(format);
}
This is yet not full proof against intitializing derived Enum objects with any integer value. However it can provide good syntactic guideline to work in non-enum environment.