Hello there,
I was wondering if it is possible to create an object on-the-fly. For example:- I have a class called Customer which holds the name, address and phone number of a customer. While the program is running I get a new customer, Mr Brown. How can I create a new Customer object which will hold the details of Mr Brown.
yours in anticipation
seaview
Don't really understand what you mean creating object on the fly.
But to create an object to store the details of Mr Brown. in your main program.
Customer customer = new Customer();
customer.setName("WHATEVERNAME");
customer.setAddress("WHATEVERADDRESS");
customer.setPhone("....");
Anyway, good luck
I'm back agen.
I don't think I explained myself properly. Say I had a store selling bicycles. My computer is on the counter idling away when Mr Brown comes in to buy a bike. I want to enter his details into my program so I type 'Brown' into a text field and when I click enter I want the program to create an object of my Customer class, which will hold Mr Brown's name and address etc.
I don't want to have to stop the program and type Customer brown = new Customer(), but when I type brown into the text field and enter it I want the program to give me a new object named brown.
I tried putting brown into a string like String str = "brown"; then tried Customer str = new Customer() but it thinks I want an object called str.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Regards
seaview.
If I understood you right, you are thinking far too complicated.
So, when you click a button, a new object shall be created and stored. So basically you write a listener to your button that contains a method like this:
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e){
Customer newCustomer = new Customer(textfield.getText());
listOfCustomers.add(newCustomer);
}
Maybe what got you confused is the object's name. Remember this: variables and field names DON'T exist anymore at runtime! They are just meant to help you when programming. If you want Mr. Brown as a customer, you have to provide a field in the customer class for the name. If a field is required for the existence of an object, you usually write a custom constructor for it, which accepts an according parameter.
> I'm back agen.
>
> I don't think I explained myself properly. Say
> I had a store selling bicycles. My computer is on
> the counter idling away when Mr Brown comes in to
> buy a bike. I want to enter his details into my
> program so I type 'Brown' into a text field and when
> I click enter I want the program to create an object
> of my Customer class, which will hold Mr Brown's
> name and address etc.
> I don't want to have to stop the program and
> type Customer brown = new Customer(),
Ther's no "stopping the program" here. new Customer(...) is the normal way to create objects. I don't know what other approach you're thinking of, or what benefits you imagine, but most likely you're being driven by false information and/or misunderstanding.
