Issue with creation of a specific field for a java program.

Question

Hey everyone,
This is homework which is end of chapter "challenges" to practice what we've learnt.
The chapter covers inheritance (super class and all things related)
I'm having quite an annoying issue with the very beginning of the instructions, where it tells me to make the following fields:
- Employee name
- Employee number in the format XXX-L , where each X is a digit within the range 0-9 and the L is a letter within the range A-M.
- Hire date
This is what I wrote for code so far
private String name;
//private WTF
private String date;I really have no idea what to do for the second field, how to even constrain integers and letters in the same field with a rule for number range and letter range, and that for each character independently, for what I understand.
Any advice with this? It's blocking me from continuing -_-, because I can't make accessors and mutators and constructors, etc, if i'm still unsure of how the fields unfold.
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can create a HireDate class.
public class HireDate{
   private final int day;
   private final String month;
   private final int year;
   public HireDate(int day, String month, int year){
      this.day = day;
      this.month = month;
      this.year = year;
}In the HireDate Constructor you could put if statements to ensure that only correct information is present. The fields are final because the hire date will not change. Override the toString() method so that when you print it out it will be in the correct format. Create some getter methods to get the private fields.
Then in your other class just do this
HireDate hired = new HireDate(10, July, 1991);Now you have an object that stores all 3 fields for you. You can use the object as you like and when it prints it will be in the format you want.
Or you could just make hireDate a String variable. That is what I always did and I never lost marks for it. The reason I suggest this way is because you mentioned rules and constraints.