Reading from .txt to arraylist?

[Cody Moss]

Hello! I am currently working on a program that will read from a .txt file to create an arraylist. I will be working with the objects in the list to perform computations and display the data. The .txt file is in the following format:

lastName firstName hoursWorked hourlyRate

With no delimiters. I've messed with this thing way too much in the last 12 hours (only day off for the week ) so variable names etc have changed often. If there are errors in the program due to that I profusely apologize! Any help would be greatly appreciated.

At present the error I am receiving is "error: constructor GrossPayService in class GrossPayService cannot be applied to given types". I understand what the error means, but not how to fix it. There may be other errors as well, but at present that is all my compiler is giving me.

import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.text.*;

class AryListObjects
{
   public static void addEmployee(String firstName, String lastName, double hoursWorked, double hourlyRate) 
   {    
	    ArrayList<GrossPayService> employees = new ArrayList<GrossPayService>();

	        try
	        {
	            FileReader reader = new FileReader("Proj2Part1EmployeesDataFile.txt");
	            Scanner in = new Scanner(reader);
               while (in.hasNextLine())
               {
                  firstName = in.next();
                  lastName = in.next();
                  hoursWorked = in.nextDouble();
                  hourlyRate = in.nextDouble();
                  GrossPayService objct = new GrossPayService(lastName, firstName, hourlyRate, hoursWorked);
                  employees.add (objct);
               }
	        }
	        catch(FileNotFoundException fileNotFound)
	        {
	            System.err.println( "Error opening file.");
	            System.exit(1);
	        }


		System.out.print ("\n\t\tName: \t      Hours Worked: Rate of Pay: Gross Pay: ");
		for (GrossPayService emp : employees) //enhanced loop; note Object emp
		   System.out.print ("\n\t" + emp);
		   System.out.println("\n");

[Varun Chandra Jammula]

It might be the problem with constructor, nothing to do with the ArrayList I suppose.

[Jacob Anawalt]

What trouble are you having in deciding how to change your GrossPayService constructor declaration(s) or the arguments to the constructor on line 21 to fix this error?

As an aside, an addEmployee that takes arguments of the employee to add makes sense, but seeing it read one or more employees from a file doesn't. I would do that in a readEmployees(String fileName) or some such thing.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Welcome to the Ranch

That looks like a class written specifically to sort out the problem reading from the file. That is a good idea. Agree that the error message suggests you are passing the wrong types for the constructor. Please show us the constructor for the gross pay class.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Has somebody told you they want an LF character? If not, avoid \n. Use printf and %n instead.
Also try to reduce the number of print calls. You will get a slight performance enhancement if you can join two print calls into one.

[Winston Gutkowski]

Jacob Anawalt wrote:As an aside, an addEmployee that takes arguments of the employee to add makes sense, but seeing it read one or more employees from a file doesn't. I would do that in a readEmployees(String fileName) or some such thing.

Totally agree.

@Cody: Another point:
You don't need to enclose code in a try...catch block just because it throws a checked Exception.

Your block doesn't add any value at all, because all it does is swallow an Exception and exit your program with a message that is probably far less informative than the original stacktrace would be. Also: you don't close() the FileReader.

My advice - either:
1. Use a try-with-resources block, and re-throw any IOException as an IOError, containing the original Exception as a 'cause'.
or:
2. Add 'throws IOException' to your addEmployee() method declaration, and remove the try...catch block altogether.

Winston

[Cody Moss]

Thanks for all the welcomes and help everyone!

I do not have a constructor - everything I have posted so far is what I've got, at this point. Do I need one? What should go in it? I have used them before, but this is my first time using arrayList.

I have tried added 'throws IOException' and removing try...catch. Now my code looks like this:

class AryListObjects
{
   public static void addEmployee(String firstName, String lastName, double hoursWorked, double hourlyRate) throws IOException
   {    
	    ArrayList<GrossPayService> employees = new ArrayList<GrossPayService>();


	            FileReader reader = new FileReader("Proj2Part1EmployeesDataFile.txt");
	            Scanner in = new Scanner(reader);
               while (in.hasNextLine())
               {
                  firstName = in.next();
                  lastName = in.next();
                  hoursWorked = in.nextDouble();
                  hourlyRate = in.nextDouble();
                  GrossPayService objct = new GrossPayService(lastName, firstName, hourlyRate, hoursWorked);
                  employees.add (objct);

		System.out.print ("\n\t\tName: \t      Hours Worked: Rate of Pay: Gross Pay: ");
		for (GrossPayService emp : employees) //enhanced loop; note Object emp
		   System.out.print ("\n\t" + emp);
		   System.out.println("\n");
         
      System.out.print ("\n\tCurrent Elements: ");
		   for (GrossPayService emp : aryListOfObjects) //enhanced loop; note Object emp
			System.out.print ("\n\t" + emp);
		System.out.println("\n");

		}		
	}//end method
}//end class

and I am receiving an error message stating that

required: String,double,double
found: String,String,double,double
reason: actual and formal argument lists differ in length

when trying to create an object.

[Jacob Anawalt]

Where is GrossPayService defined? It sounds like it has a constructor that takes a string and two doubles. Let's see it.

[Cody Moss]

Like I said, all the code I have is posted. That's why I'm confused that it says it is defined as having three variables - I can't find anywhere in the code where I stated that.

[Tony Docherty]

That can't possibly be all the code, there must also be a class called GrossPayService as Jacob has pointed out (It may be the class was supplied by your teacher rather than you writing it). Also please post the full compiler message as it gives us more information on where the problem is occurring than the snippet you have supplied.