Hi guys, as part of an exercise I was involved with, I had to use the factory pattern to create a series of different objects, however I'd like to keep a list or map for what it matters of these objects and I'm getting a bit into troubles here.
So basically, I have a CSV file containing some data which I'd like to use to construct my objects: the data in the spreadsheet is arranged in the following cols:
name, surname, date_of_birth, type
and I'm essentially reading from the spreadsheet and using the factory pattern I'm building a series of Employee objects, either full time or part time (that's stored inside the type column in the spreadsheet).
This has been done but I'd like to keep a list of all the employees, regardless of whether they are full time or part time and I'm not sure how and where to populate that list, that's why I got a bit stack.
Here is what I've done (in a nutshell)
- I have an abstract Employee class which is my model
- a FulltimeEmployee and ParttimeEmployee concrete classes implementing the EMployee class
- an EmployeeFactory class which determines whether the employee is part time or full time and builds the objects accordingly
- a ReadData class which reads the spreadsheet and calls the factory class with the data needed to build the objects
- a EmployeeTestingMain with main which creates a ReadData object and kicks off everything.
Ideally I'd like to keep a list of all these objects in my main class, but considering the above that's not entirely possible. So my question is, where do I create this list and where do I populate it from?
I feel that the list should be populated from the factory class because this is where I'm creating the full time/part time objects but then for me to access it form the main class I'd have to create this list as a static, and I'm not convinced. What are your thoughts?
I'm including the code below, just so you have an idea of what I've done.
Employee
package com.factoryPattern.model;
public abstract class Employee {
private String name;
private String surname;
private String dob;
private String type;
public Employee(String name, String surname, String dob, String type) {
this.name = name;
this.surname = surname;
this.dob = dob;
if(type != null) {
this.type = type;
}
else {
this.type = "unspecified";
}
}
public String getName() {
return name;
}
public String getSurname() {
return surname;
}
public String getDob() {
return dob;
}
public String getType() {
return type;
}
@Override
public String toString() {
return "Employee [name=" + name + ", surname=" + surname + ", dob=" + dob + ", type=" + type + "]";
}
public abstract void printDetails();
}
FullTimeEmployee
package com.factoryPattern.impl;
import com.factoryPattern.model.Employee;
public class FulltimeEmployee extends Employee{
public FulltimeEmployee(String name, String surname, String dob, String type) {
super(name, surname, dob, type);
}
@Override
public void printDetails() {
System.out.println("This is a full time employer");
System.out.println(super.toString());
}
}
PartTimeEmployee
package com.factoryPattern.impl;
import com.factoryPattern.model.Employee;
public class PartimeEmployee extends Employee {
public PartimeEmployee(String name, String surname, String dob, String type) {
super(name, surname, dob, type);
}
@Override
public void printDetails() {
System.out.println("This is a part time employer");
System.out.println(super.toString());
}
}
EmployeeFactory
package com.factoryPattern.factory;
import com.factoryPattern.impl.FulltimeEmployee;
import com.factoryPattern.impl.PartimeEmployee;
import com.factoryPattern.model.Employee;
public class EmployeeFactory {
public static void buildEmployee(String name, String surname, String dob, String type) {
Employee employee = null;
switch(type) {
case "part_time":
employee = new PartimeEmployee(name, surname, dob, type);
employee.printDetails();
break;
case "full_time":
employee = new FulltimeEmployee(name, surname, dob, type);
employee.printDetails();
break;
}
}
}
ReadData
package com.facrotyPattern.fileReaders;
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;
import com.factoryPattern.factory.EmployeeFactory;
import java.io.FileReader;
public class ReadData {
private static final String READ_FILE_PATH = System.getProperty("user.dir") + "/Files/employees.csv";
private static final String COMMA_DELIMITER = ",";
//private Map<String, String> employeeProperties = new HashMap<String, String>();
public void readDataFromDoc() {
BufferedReader br = null;
try {
br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(READ_FILE_PATH));
String line = "";
br.readLine();
while ((line = br.readLine()) != null)
{
String[] employeeDetails = line.split(COMMA_DELIMITER);
for (int i = 0; i < employeeDetails.length; i++) {
//System.out.println(employeeDetails[i]);
}
EmployeeFactory.buildEmployee(employeeDetails[0], employeeDetails[1], employeeDetails[2], employeeDetails[3]);
//populateMap(employeeDetails);
}
}
catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
finally {
try {
br.close();
}
catch(IOException ie) {
System.out.println("Error occured while closing the BufferedReader");
ie.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
// private void populateMap(String[] employeeDetails) {
// employeeProperties.put("name", employeeDetails[0]);
// employeeProperties.put("surname", employeeDetails[1]);
// employeeProperties.put("date_of_birth", employeeDetails[2]);
// employeeProperties.put("type", employeeDetails[3]);
//
//
// }
}
Main class
package com.factoryPattern.testingClass;
import com.facrotyPattern.fileReaders.ReadData;
public class EmployeeTestingMain {
public static void main(String[] args) {
ReadData fileReader = new ReadData();
fileReader.readDataFromDoc();
}
}
