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Thread: Printing an ArrayList of user-defined Objects

  1. #1
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    Default Printing an ArrayList of user-defined Objects

    Hi guys, I'm having trouble printing an ArrayList of Employees(My objects) for school. It keeps printing out what I think to be the hexcodes for various characters. I tried many variants of google searches but none of the answers that came up seemed to help.

    Here is my code:
    import java.util.*;
    import java.io.*;
     
    public class MyClass
    {
    	public static void main (String [] args)
    	{
    		ArrayList<Employee> list = loadEmployees();
    		for (int i=0;i<list.size();i++)                                 //will show what this prints below
    		{
    			System.out.println(list.get(i).printerString());
    		}
    	}
     
    	static ArrayList loadEmployees()
    	{
    		ArrayList<String[]> list = new ArrayList<String[]>();
    		ArrayList<Employee> employees = new ArrayList<Employee>();
    		BufferedReader br = null;
    		String [] strArr, arr;
    		Object [] objArr = new Object[5];
    		String line;
    		int count = 0;
    		try
    		{
     
    			br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("MyFilePath"));
    			strArr = new String[10];
    			while ((line = br.readLine()) != null)
    			{
    				strArr = line.split("\\s+");
    				list.add(count, strArr);
    				count++;
    			}
    		}
    		catch(Exception e){}
    		for (int i=0; i<list.size(); i++)           //I think that this for-loop may be part of the problem, basically its filling ArrayList employees with objects
    		{
    			list.toArray(objArr);
    			arr = new String[objArr.length];
    			for(int g=0; g<arr.length;g++)
    			{
    				arr[g] = objArr[g].toString();
    			}
     
    			String temp = Arrays.toString(arr);
    			employees.add(i, Employee.create(temp));
    		}
     
    		return employees;
    	}
     
    }
     
    class Employee
    {
    	String name, company, projectName, projectPosition;
    	private Employee(String name, String company, String projectName, String projectPosition)
    	{
    		this.name = name;
    		this.company = company;
    		this.projectName = projectName;
    		this.projectPosition = projectPosition;
    	}
     
    	public String printerString()
    	{
    		String str = "Name: " + name + "\nCompany: " + company + "\nProject Name" + projectName + "\nProject Position: " + projectPosition + "\n";
    		return str;
    	}
     
    	public static Employee create(String str)
    	{
    		String[] holder = str.split("\\s+");
    		return new Employee(holder[0], holder[1], holder[2], holder[3]);
    	}
    }

    Not sure if needed, but here is the file I'm reading from:
    	Joe 		EISI 		Project1	manager	
    	Fred 		RIM 		Project3	developer
    	Sally 		EISI 		Project2	developer
    	Jane 		RIM 		Project3	qualityAssurance
    	Molly 		EA 			Project2	graphicDesign

    It is a .txt file.

    My output looks like this:
    Name: [[Ljava.lang.String;@207148e9,
    Company: [Ljava.lang.String;@6d69c9a2,
    Project Name[Ljava.lang.String;@3c34e2cc,
    Project Position: [Ljava.lang.String;@3415ddf5,
     
    Name: [[Ljava.lang.String;@207148e9,
    Company: [Ljava.lang.String;@6d69c9a2,
    Project Name[Ljava.lang.String;@3c34e2cc,
    Project Position: [Ljava.lang.String;@3415ddf5,
     
    Name: [[Ljava.lang.String;@207148e9,
    Company: [Ljava.lang.String;@6d69c9a2,
    Project Name[Ljava.lang.String;@3c34e2cc,
    Project Position: [Ljava.lang.String;@3415ddf5,
     
    Name: [[Ljava.lang.String;@207148e9,
    Company: [Ljava.lang.String;@6d69c9a2,
    Project Name[Ljava.lang.String;@3c34e2cc,
    Project Position: [Ljava.lang.String;@3415ddf5,
     
    Name: [[Ljava.lang.String;@207148e9,
    Company: [Ljava.lang.String;@6d69c9a2,
    Project Name[Ljava.lang.String;@3c34e2cc,
    Project Position: [Ljava.lang.String;@3415ddf5,

    I think that's everything, let me know if you need to know anything else.

    Thanks,
    er1111


  2. #2
    Super Moderator Sean4u's Avatar
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    Default Re: Printing an ArrayList of user-defined Objects

    What you're seeing is the output from Object.toString() - read the API documentation for the method, and then override it in your own classes. Writing toString() methods for my classes is one of my favourite Java programming activities: it's like putting the cherry on the cake.

    Glancing at your code again, you may have more problems than that. If you have a list of Employee, or even a list of lists of Employee, all you should need to do is to implement Employee.toString() and then:
    List<List<Employee>> listOfListsOfEmployees = makeWeirdEmployeeListOfLists();
    System.out.println(listOfListsOfEmployees)

    List.toString will iterate over its members invoking toString() on each, concatenate all the return values nicely and return it.
    Last edited by Sean4u; March 2nd, 2012 at 04:15 AM.

  3. The Following User Says Thank You to Sean4u For This Useful Post:

    er1111 (March 2nd, 2012)

  4. #3
    Junior Member
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    Default Re: Printing an ArrayList of user-defined Objects

    Hi there! I did have a.toString() method, but I found that I needed the original.toString() method from Arrays.toString(), so I ended up just calling my .tostring() method printerstring.

    For some reason when i called Arrays.toString() while my Employee.toString() method existed, it produced a different result, like I had somehow edited Arrays.toString() by creating Employee.toString(). I changed my Employee.toString() method to Employee.printerString();

    -EDIT-
    typos

    -EDIT 2-
    I ended up just messing around with my loadEmployees() method and my Employee.create method, cleaned it up and it ended up working. Here is the (semi-)finished code:
    import java.util.*;
    import java.io.*;
    @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
    public class MyClass
    {
      public static void main (String [] args)
      {
        ArrayList<Employee> list = loadEmployees();
        for (int i=0;i<list.size();i++)
        {
          System.out.println(list.get(i).printerString());
        }
      }
     
      public static void processEmployees() 
      { 
        ArrayList<Employee> employees = loadEmployees();  
        printEmployees(employees); 
      }
     
      @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
      static ArrayList loadEmployees()
      {
        ArrayList<String> list = new ArrayList<String>();
        ArrayList<Employee> employees = new ArrayList<Employee>();
        BufferedReader br = null;
        String [] strArr, arr = new String[5];
        String line;
        int count = 0;
        try
        {
     
          br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("MyFilePath"));
          strArr = new String[10];
          while ((line = br.readLine()) != null)
          {
            strArr = line.split("\\s+");
            employees.add(0, Employee.create(strArr));  //just added this part in, rather than that messy forloop
            count++;
          }
        }
        catch(Exception e){ System.out.println(e.getMessage()); }
     
        return employees;
      }
    }
     
    class Employee
    {
      String name, company, projectName, projectPosition;
      private Employee(String name, String company, String projectName, String projectPosition)
      {
        this.name = name;
        this.company = company;
        this.projectName = projectName;
        this.projectPosition = projectPosition;
      }
     
      public String printerString()
      {
        String str = "Name: " + name + "\nCompany: " + company + "\nProject Name: " + projectName + "\nProject Position: " + projectPosition + "\n";
        return str;
      }
     
      public static Employee create(String[] str) //changed this method
      {
        return new Employee(str[1], str[2], str[3], str[4]);
      }
    }
    Last edited by er1111; March 2nd, 2012 at 02:06 PM.

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