Question

I’m in the process of learning C++. I’ve come across a rather interesting issue where I wish to store within a Customer class their food tray. The basic idea would be that one customer can have a tray which consists of drinks and foods.

My original thought was to use following class.

class Customer
{
private:
    std::string firstName;
    std::string lastName;
    int tablenumber;
    //LinkList<Tray> myTray = new LinkList<Tray>();
    //or
    //LinkList<Tray> myTray;
public:
    Customer();
    Customer(std::string sFirstName, std::string sLastName, 
        int sTableNumber);
    ~Customer(void);

What would be the correct way for dealing with having an object store a Linklist within itself? So upon calling the customer constructor, they can have orders added to it?

Answer 1

Let me address a more fundamental issue before going to the details.

It is not good to think about LinkList<Tray> myTray = new LinkList<Tray>(); as a solution.

Think about it this way, Every Customer will have their own Tray. So you need a new tray for each customer.

Remember that a class is just a blueprint.

So go with LinkList<Tray> myTray; and then in constructor of your object, allot a new tray each time a customer is created.
it would look like :

Customer()
{
//other construction 
 myTray = new LinkList<Tray>();
}

Note that you must now declare it like LinkList<Tray> * myTray; if you want to allocate the list dynamically.

now you can use myTray as per your requirements. Eg. you may like to call myTray.addToList(MyNewItem) and the likes.

Assumption:

When every object shares the same value, you declare them as static. But you mentioned within a Customer class their food tray so i am assuming this is not the case here.