Question

I have two classes, Foo and Bar. Each Foo has a name and a bunch of items. Bar contains a bunch of Foo’s, each with a unique name.

Bar has a method, AddEntry that takes a fooName and an item (1) if a foo with fooName is already in the Bar, adds another item to the Foo or (2) if a foo with fooName is not in the Bar, creates a Foo with that name and add the item to the new Foo.

This is an outline of how I’m implementing. Is there a better way? I’m just learning Java, but this seems clunky

class Foo { // a name and some items
    String fooName;
    List<Object> items = new ArrayList<Object>;
    Foo(name) {...} // create a named Foo
    AddtoFoo(item) {...} // add an item to this Foo
}

class Bar { // a bunch of foo's
    List<Foo> fooList = new Arraylist<Foo>;

    void AddEntry(String fooName, Object item) {
        boolean member = false;
        for(Foo foo : fooList){
            if{foo.name == fooName) {
                member = true;
                foo.AddtoFoo(item); // adds an item to this foo
                break;
             }
        }
        if(member == false) {
            Foo foo = new Foo(fooName); // creates a named foo
            foo.AddtoFoo(item);  // adds the item
            fooList.add(foo);  // maintain our list of foo's
        }

    }
}

Answer 1

I’d use a Map<String, Foo> to map the foo name to a foo object.

Map<String, Foo> fooMap = new HashMap<String, Foo>();

Thus you could do

Foo foo = fooMap.get(fooName);
if( foo == null)
{
  foo = new Foo(fooName);
  fooMap.put(fooName, foo);
}
foo.AddtoFoo(item);