Help Counting Vowels and Consonants using a class

Question

I'm currently working on a class project where I need take a user inputed string and count how many vowels and/or consonants are in the String at the user discretion. I have the main logic program working fine. However, the trouble I'm running into is how to take the string the user inputed and pass that data into the class method for counting.
Here is the code for the program:
package vowelsandconsonants;
import java.util.Scanner;
public class VowelConsCounter {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String input; //User input
        char selection; //Menu selection
        //Create a Scanner object for keyboard input.
        Scanner keyboard = new Scanner(System.in);
        //Get the string to start out with.
        System.out.print("Enter a string: ");
        input = keyboard.nextLine();
        //Create a VowelCons object.
        VowelCons vc = new VowelCons(input);
        do {
            // Display the menu and get the user's selection.
            selection = getMenuSelection();
            // Act on the selection
            switch (Character.toLowerCase(selection)) {
                case 'a':
                    System.out.println("\nNumber of Vowels: " +
                            vc.getNumVowels());
                    break;
                case 'b':
                    System.out.println("\nNumber of consonats: " +
                            vc.getNumConsonants());
                    break;
                case 'c':
                    System.out.println("\nNumber of Vowels: " +
                            vc.getNumVowels());
                    System.out.println("Number of consonants: " +
                            vc.getNumConsonants());
                    break;
                case 'd':
                    System.out.print("Enter a string: ");
                    input = keyboard.nextLine();
                    vc = new VowelCons(input);
        } while (Character.toLowerCase(selection) != 'e');
     * The getMenuSelection method displays the menu and gets the user's choice.
    public static char getMenuSelection() {
        String input;  //To hold keyboard input
        char selection;  // The user's selection
        //Create a Scanner object for keyboard input.
        Scanner keyboard = new Scanner(System.in);
        //Display the menu.
        System.out.println("a) Count the number of vowels in the string.");
        System.out.println("b) Count the number of consonants in the string.");
        System.out.println("c) Count both the vowels and consonants in the string.");
        System.out.println("d) Enter another string.");
        System.out.println("e) Exit the program.");
        //Get the user's selection
        input = keyboard.nextLine();
        selection = input.charAt(0);
        //Validate the input
        while (Character.toLowerCase(selection) < 'a' ||
                Character.toLowerCase(selection) > 'e') {
            System.out.print("Only enter a,b,c,d or e:");
            input = keyboard.nextLine();
            selection = input.charAt(0);
        return selection;
class VowelCons {
    private char[] vowels;
    private char[] consonants;
    private int numVowels = 0;
    private int numCons = 0;
    public VowelCons(String str) {
    public int getNumVowels() {
        return numVowels;
    public int getNumConsonants() {
        return numCons;
    private void countVowelsAndCons() {
        for (int i = 0; i < total; i++) {
            char ch = inputString.charAt(i);
            if ((ch == 'a') || (ch == 'A') || (ch == 'e') || (ch == 'E') || (ch == 'i') || (ch == 'I') || (ch == 'o') || (ch == 'O') || (ch == 'u') || (ch == 'U')) {
                numVowels++;
            } else if (Character.isLetter(ch)) {
                numCons++;
}The UML given to me by my instructor calls for the counting method to be private. Being that I'm not too familiar with Java syntax I did not know if that may cause a problem with passing the user's input into that method.

Answer 1

Well the only compilers i get are due to the code:
private void countVowelsAndCons() {
        for (int i = 0; i < total; i++) {
            char ch = inputString.charAt(i);
            if ((ch == 'a') || (ch == 'A') || (ch == 'e') || (ch == 'E') || (ch == 'i') || (ch == 'I') || (ch == 'o') || (ch == 'O') || (ch == 'u') || (ch == 'U')) {
                numVowels++;
            } else if (Character.isLetter(ch)) {
                numCons++;
    }However, that is due to the fact that i have no data for those variables to use. I'm pretty much stuck on how to get the string the user inputs into that method shown above so the code can perform the task of counting the vowels and consonants.
If i comment out the code within that function the program compiles and will allow me to enter the string and use the options but since i can't figure out how to pass the input to the counting method the program returns 0 for everything.