Creating Class Instances from Strings

Question

Folks,
I have a class called Employee. I would like to create instances of this class based on the user input in certain JTextFields in a form. For instance, if the user inputs First Name = John and Last Name = Doe, then the instance John_Doe of the Employee Class is created. I played w/ newInstance() and Class.forName() but can't seem to get that working. Does this require reflection? I just need someone to point me in the right direction.
Thanks,
steve

Answer 1

Dear jverd (and walken),
Thanks for your note. I'm sorry, I don't really
understand what you mean by "is the class determined
at runtime or just the parameters?"It sounds like walker answered your immediate questions, but just to clear up this (which I guess I didn't state very clearly), what I meant was, will you sometimes be creating an Employee, and sometimes some other class, or will it only be the employee's name, etc., that's different for each one you create?
If, at the time you're writing your code, you know which class you're creating, then you don't need reflection. You just do new WhateverTheClassIs() (possibly passing parameters, such as names, to the constructor.
On the other hand, if the class to be instantiated will be determined at runtime--maybe you prompt the user for which class, and he enters "Employee"--then you need to use reflection.
You shouldn't need to worry about reflection for a while. Get the fundamentals of the language solidly under your belt before you tackle that. Good luck! :-)