Question

I’m trying to call a method from another method in the same class to check if something entered by the user is in an arrayList. If it is in the arrayList, I want to add 1 to its quantity. If it’s not in the arrayList, I’ll add it to the arrayList. Here’s what I have:

public Item searchForItem(String n){
  for(int i = 0; i < s.size(); i++){   
    Item y = s.get(i);  
    if(y.getName().equals(name)){  
      return y;    
    } 
  }
  return null;
}
public void addItem(Item f) {  
  s.add(f);    
}

I know that I’ll need an if statement in the addItem method, but I’m not sure how to write it.

Is there a way to check if either y was returned or whether null was returned?

Answer 1

Just call the searchForItem method passing name as an argument.

public void addItem(Item f) {  
 if(searchForItem(f.getName())==null) {
  s.add(f);    // add's the item only if searchForItem returns null
}
}