Help, store an array of cd objects

Question

im doing a java project on creating a music cd database, i need to store an array of cd objects, each entry in the array will be a single object for a cd.
The objects are: Artist, Album, No of tracks
I need some help with this, thanks
here's the code ive done so far:
import javax.swing.JOptionPane;
class Cd1
     public static void main (String[] args)
          int menu_choice;
          CdRecord one = new CdRecord();
          one.artist_name = JOptionPane.showInputDialog("Enter artist name.");
          one.album_name = JOptionPane.showInputDialog("Enter album name.");
          one.no_of_tracks =Integer.parseInt(JOptionPane.showInputDialog("Enter the number of tracks on the album"));
     one.printCdRecord();          
class CdRecord
     public String artist_name;
     public String album_name;
     public int no_of_tracks;
public CdRecord (String artist, String album, int tracks, int year)
     artist_name = artist;
     album_name = album;
     no_of_tracks = tracks;
public CdRecord()
artist_name = "A";
album_name = "B";
no_of_tracks = 0;
public void printCdRecord ()
String o = "Artist Name: " + artist_name + "\nAlbum Name: " album_name"\nNo. Of Tracks: " + no_of_tracks;;
System.out.println(o);
}

Answer 1

where should i put this in my code?this part would normally be a class field, accessible from many parts of the class
java.util.List<CdRecord> records;to it may look something like this
class Cd1
  private java.util.List<CdRecord> records;//and use constructor to create
  //or
  private java.util.List<CdRecord> records = new java.util.ArrayList<CdRecord>();
  ...as is, the above will cause you a problem because you have most of your code in main() which is static.
before you go much further, rethink your program design:
- your class name is Cd1, which would indicate a single CD, but you're doing a CD database so call it CdInventory, CdCollection, etc
- the only code you want in main() is to start the program, so that would be new CdInventory(), nothing more (unless creating a GUI)
- how are you going to get new records - a GUI with buttons add/edit/delete, or the console.
- are you going to save new/edited records to a file (the database), and read existing data back into the program at startup
- basically how you go about the above determines what you have in the constructor of the program (and do not use main() for this)