Question

part of the application am developing is presenting a form to the user and requesting them to either decline it/accept it. There are thee types of users that will need to approve the same form so that it is considered accepted. The suggestion I need is this: What structure can I use/best use to store the user type and their response?
So far I have an object that is Approvers. This holds the three types of users with setters and getters (and other methods related to operations). I also created another object that is UserDecisions where i have two attributes to set, they are: Usertype & response. But I can’t think of how to link them together or if there is a better way altogether?
Thanks,

P.s. things i’ve considered were 2D arrays & hashmaps.

Answer 1

Suppose that you have

User { name, type  }  
         // type is perhaps an enum with values such as administrator,
         // manager, seniorManager, executive 

Response { user, decision }
         // decision is an enum "pending", "approved", "rejected"

Role { name, minimumTypeOfUser }
         // first approval can be done by administrators or above
         // second approval by managers or above
         // third approval by executives only

Approval { Role, Response }


ThingToBeApproved { detalsOfWhatNeedsApproving, approvalList<Approval> }
          // when you set up the approval list you specify each
          // approval role and then select a user whose type matches
          // the role.

In systems I work we decouple the Users from the Roles for doing a task – a more senior person on occasion fulfils the junior’s role.