Question

I was wondering if anyone would be able to help me out with regards to printing out a list of a custom class (first time using containers).

Currently I have a variable declared as:

std::list<Item> inventory;

within a class called player.

Now I have created a function within the class (player) called void printInventory();.

So my question is how do I go about printing what is in that list.

My Item class contains 3 variables;

std::string name; 
int damage;
int value;

I also have a function to print these variables void itemDetails();

Any help is much appreciated.

Edit:

I know have solved my problem with thanks to the answers provided, here’s what i did:

Overloaded the output operator in the item class:

    ostream& operator<<(ostream& os, const Item& item)
    {
            if (item.getTypeInt() == 0)
            {
                    os << "Name: " << item.getName() << endl
                    << "Type: " << item.getTypeString() << endl
                    << "Damage: " << item.getDamage()<< endl
                    << "Value: " << item.getValue() << endl;
            }
            else
            {
            os << "Name: " << item.getName() << endl
            << "Type: " << item.getTypeString() << endl
            << "HP: " << item.getHP()<< endl
            << "Value: " << item.getValue() << endl;
    }

    return os;
    }

I then used one of the answers but modified it so it wasn’t declaring another variable:

    void Player::printInventory()
    {   
        for(std::list<Item>::iterator it = inventory.begin(); it!= inventory.end(); ++it)
        {
                cout << *it;
        }

        cout <<"Inventroy Printed!!"<<endl;
    }

Answer 1

You should overload std::ostream& operator<< for Item and player, this will allow you to write the data to streams other than stdout. Here’s an example:

std::ostream& ooprator<<(std::ostream& os, const Item& item)
{
  return os << "Item {" << item.name << " " << item.damage << " " << item.value << "}";
}

This allows you to do

Item i;
std::cout << i << "\n";

Then, you implement a similar operator for player, looping over the list and printing each item.

std::ostream& ooprator<<(std::ostream& os, const player& p)
  for (const auto& i : p.inventory) os << i << " "
  return os;
}