Putting a Class Object into a Vector

Question

HI all
I need to put a class object into another classes vector, then be able to read it and retrieve data.
I can put the object into the vector but all i seem to be able to retrieve is data like Account@2343c2.
Is this some sort of tag? How do i get to the data?
thankz
joey

Answer 1

That's what you get when you print an object which does not have its own toString() method to do anything different - it picks up the Object class's toString method instead. For example:
System.out.println(new Object());It sounds like you're doing something like this:
Vector v = new Vector();
v.add(new Account(42));If you were to do the following, you would see that sort of output:
System.out.println(v.get(0));The appropriate way to do this would be something like the following:
   // Use a List reference instead of a Vector reference, and create
   // an ArrayList object in preference to a Vector object
   List list = new ArrayList();
   list.add(new Account(42));
   // Iterate through the list of accounts - use an
   // iterator because this prevents off-by-one errors
   // that arise with direct indexing.
   Iterator i = list.iterator();
   while(i.hasNext()) {
      // Cast the reference returned by the iterator from
      // Object to Account so that we can call account-specific
      // methods.
      Account current = (Account)i.next();
      // Call the method specific to the Account class (getBalance
      // is just an example that I made up).
      System.out.println(current.getBalance());
   }