Question

I want to collect data which is classified in many groups. When I receive the first item of a group, I want to put a boolean as TRUE, to indicate there is some info into that group or not.

My first approach was writing a method to return that boolean for each group I want to check. But since I have 8 groups, I though about giving a different scope: I defined an ENUM, and created a Map having that ENUM as key and the boolean as the Value:

enum dataNames{TITLE, AUTHOR, SOURCE, ELEVATION, SPEED, SATELLITES, LATITUDE, LONGITUDE}; //etc

private Map<dataNames, Boolean> availableData;

And then I check the state of each boolean calling this method:

public boolean isDataAvailable (dataNames name){
        return availableData.containsKey(name);
    }

For example:

public void addElevationValue(double elevationValue){
        if(!isDataAvailable(dataNames.ELEVATION)) availableData.put(dataNames.ELEVATION, true);
        elevacion.add(elevationValue);
    }

My question is: is this a good aproach, or should I stay with a method for each boolean I want to check? And… why? (I just want to learn)

Answer 1

Why do you need a map to tell you if data is available or not?

It looks like you are storing your data in a collection, so if this collection is empty, there is no data available.

For example:

public void addElevationValue(double elevationValue){
    elevacion.add(elevationValue);
}

public boolean hasElevationData(){
    return !elevacion.isEmpty();
}