Question

In my function, in order to accept an array of values I have to define a data type…

myFunc( String[] myVar ) {}

What if I wanted an array like the below array that mixes objects and strings and nested arrays/ (Note: the below array is in PHP)

myFunc(array(
   array(
      'name' => 'Category1',
      'products' => array(
          array(
              productObject,
              productObject,
              ...
          )
      )
   )
));

Is this possible in Java or is this a completely wrong technique?

Answer 1

You would need to use an object-oriented approach in Java (which will also work in PHP). The class structure for the object you’ve listed above would be as follows:

public class MyObject {
    String name;
    Product[] products;

    public MyObject(String name, Product[] products) {
        this.name = name;
        this.products = products;
    }
}

Then you can get an instance of that class by doing the following:

new MyObject("Category1", new Product[] { productObject1, productObject2 });

You can also have an array of this object type:

MyObject[] myObjs = {
    new MyObject("Category1", new Product[] { productObject1, productObject2 });
    new MyObject("Category2", new Product[] { productObject3, productObject4 });
    new MyObject("Category3", new Product[] { productObject5, productObject6 });
}