How to get the return of a method inside an object in an ArrayList?

**Hallowed** · May 1st, 2011, 01:31 PM

So here is my predicament.
I have an ArrayList called dealersHand.
I also have an ArrayList Deck that is full of playing Card objects. the Card class contains a toString method that returns only the suit and the face of the card. But inside the Card class there is also a getValue() method with a return type of int. That holds the cards value.
What I've been doing in my program is .add(#) ing objects from the Deck arraylist directly into the dealersHand arraylist which initially, when the program runs, has nothing inside of it at all.
So my question here is. Once I put a Card object inside dealersHand array list. how can I access an individual cards getValue method?

dealersHand.get(#).getValue(); sure isn't working =(.
I've tried finding answers that actually make sense on the internet but no luck yet So thank you much for any help. =]

If you guys need I'll collect some of the code so you can look at what I'm trying to do, But i think its pretty clearly explained above?

**helloworld922** · May 1st, 2011, 01:34 PM

What exception are you getting (please post the message you're gettting)? Your description looks like it should work, though I can see one potential problem when it comes to generic typing.

**Hallowed** · May 1st, 2011, 01:44 PM

Well I think my problem is this, the code wont compile at all. And I think its because I'm trying to compile it, but when I have this code in there: dealersHand.get(#).getValue(); it doesn't compile because .getValue(); isn't in the dealersHand arraylist yet. Nothing is in it at all until the program starts running. I've changed my code to work around this, but I'll reconstruct it to see what kind of an error I'm getting specifically, and post my code here.

**Hallowed** · May 1st, 2011, 02:30 PM

This was the error I was getting...
"Exception in thread "main" java.lang.Error: Unresolved compilation problem:
The method getValue() is undefined for the type Object"

**Hallowed** · May 1st, 2011, 02:45 PM

Well never mind. o_O
I casted it like this:

((Card) dealersHand.get(i)).getValue();

And it worked fine. I'm pretty sure I tried that before and it wouldn't go! But now it does... So thanks for your help sir haha.

And sorry for the triple post. But they didn't seem unreasonable until I edited them.

**helloworld922** · May 1st, 2011, 07:19 PM

You're running into that problem because you're not specializing your ArrayList. Casting it to a Card will work, but it's not a good solution since it's possible that dealersHand could contain something other than Cards. Rather, declare dealersHand as type ArrayList<Card>.

**Hallowed** · May 1st, 2011, 10:18 PM

oh wow I can't believe I forgot to do that o_O. Thanks that will help me in future programming.

If I did have something other than a Card object in there, and for that reason I wanted to use casting and I tried to do dealersHand.get(i)).getValue(); with something that didn't have a getValue() method in it, it would make my program crash right?
So would my only solution would be, is to check somehow, if its a card first in an if statement or something. right?
like:

if (dealersHand.get(i).getType() == "Card" )
{
    dealersHand.get(i)).getValue();
}

Or is there some code I can use to check objects specifically? Providing I know that there will only be objects in that array.

**helloworld922** · May 1st, 2011, 10:44 PM

use the instanceof operator:

if(dealersHand.get(i) instanceof Card)
{
    // guaranteed to be safe to cast to Card
}

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