Thread: Calling methods from other classes

Hi everyone, this is such a dumb question but I'm doing my best in trying to learn java from a book

I'm having a hard time with abstraction/modularization, more specifically I want to call on a method in another class.

Im just messing around here but I have made three classes: Car, Wheels, Shell.
Car will abstract from Wheels and Shell.

Now I'm having a compiler error with Car as it does not like the method:

public int shellSize()
    {
        //return the size of the shell from the object big
        return big.getSize;
    }

I have tried everything I know to try and figure out why it won't work - turns out I'm stuck and wondered if you could help?

What I have:

public class Car
{
    private Shell big;
    private Wheels blackTyre;
 
    /**
     * Constructor for objects of class Car
     */
    public Car(String shellColour, int shellSize, String wheelColour, String wheelShape, int howMany)
    {
 
        big = new Shell(shellColour, shellSize);
        blackTyre = new Wheels(wheelColour, wheelShape, howMany);
    }
 
    /**
     * Method - Return the size of the shell
     */
    public int shellSize()
    {
        //return the size of the shell from the object big
        return big.getSize;
    }
}

and then my Shell class:

public class Shell
{
 
    private String colour;
    private int size;
 
    /**
     * Constructor
     */
    public Shell(String whatColour, int whatSize)
    {
       colour = whatColour;
       size = whatSize;
    }
 
    public String getColour()
    {
        return colour;
    }
 
    public int getSize()
    {
        return size;
    }
 
    public void getInfo()
    {
        System.out.println(" The colour of the shell is: " +colour+ " and the size is: " +size);
    }
}

Thanks in advance

having a compiler error with Car as it does not like the method

Please copy and paste here the full text of the error message(s).

The error message I see is:

cannot find symbol - variable getSize

So then I tried

public int shellSize()
    {
        //return the size of the shell from the object big
        return big.size;
    }

And I get the error message:

size has private access in shell

And thats where I'm at :/

cannot find symbol - variable getSize

Look at this error message again. The compiler is looking for a missing variable

What does the Shell class have that is named getSize?
A variable or a method?

You reference a method by adding an ending ()

You are incredible, how did I miss that!

thanks!

code:

public int shellSize()
    {
        //return the size of the shell from the object big
        return big.getSize();
    }

Thanks again!

It pays to take a close look at the error message and try to figure out what the compiler is looking for.