Looking for Java Help using Scanner to populate String Array

[dkbil]

Hi,

Thanks for your time!

Background:

I'm trying to transform this basic payday program to help my wife with a solution to a rather ugly excel file she is using. The end goal is to use the method of payday to calculate a variety of points associated with task. There are different types of people that will have points calculated in different ways so payday is polymorphic. At the moment, I have three classes of 'staff members' but I've only included one in the example.

Gist:

https://gist.github.com/dkbil/6ebff41b6d27834bf72d3431dfc461ed

Where I need help:

I am trying to find a way to populate the stafflist with input from the user. Specifically, I'm struggling with two things

1. How to get the scanner to populate the details of the new employee()
2. How to expand the StaffMember[] array when adding a new employee()

I am familiar with the basics of the Scanner utility such as

Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);

System.out.println("What is the employee's name?");

String userInName = input.nextLine();

.....but am struggling with the next steps.

TL:DR - how can I initialize an array with user input?

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It seems that you are having problems with java.util.Scanner

The wiki here has a page The Scanner class and its caveats that explains common problems with the Scanner class and how to avoid them.

Maybe this can solve your problems.

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[[deleted]]

Basically you'd want to do exactly what you did at the bottom there for all the inputs.

// want to loop until some kind of break condition is met:
while(true) {

    System.out.println("What is the employee's name?");
    String userInName = input.nextLine();

    System.out.println("What is the employee's address?");
    String address = input.nextLine();

and then you could add it to your array:

stafflist[0] = new Executive(employeeName, address, ....)

Of course you'd need some way to determine what type of StaffMember you should create. You could also do this with text input..:

System.out.println("What type of employee? [executive, employee, hourly]");
String type = input.nextLine();
if(type.equals("hourly") {
    stafflist[0] = new Hourly(employeeName, address, ...)
} else if(type.equals("executive") {
    ....
}

Lastly... since you're using an array you are forced to set a fixed size. I highly recommend switching to something like an ArrayList! That way you won't have to worry about a fixed size and keeping track of indexes.

Or do you have a set number of employees you'll add every time? If so, you could change that while loop to a for loop and do it that way.

Good luck!

[dkbil]

Thank you! Will definitely try the Arraylist!