The second Objects lab, from the BlueJ book's second chapter.
Look for the Chapter 2 file you need in the doc folder. There is 35 pages of reading and exercises in the chapter.
Work through all these exercises. You edit this file with your answers for these exercises.
- Create a TicketMachine object on the object bench.
- Upon viewing its methods,
getBalance
,getPrice
,insertMoney
,printTicket
. - Use
getPrice
method to view the value of the price of the tickets that was set when this object was created. - Use
insertMoney
method to simulate inserting an amount of money into the machine. - Use
getBalance
to check that the machine has a record of the amount inserted. * You can insert several separate amounts of money into the machine, just like you might insert multiple coins or notes into a real machine. Try inserting the exact amount required for a ticket. As this is a simple machine, a ticket will not be issued automatically, so once you have inserted enough money, call theprintTicket
method. A facsimile ticket should be printed in the BlueJ terminal window.
- What value is returned if you check the machine’s balance after it has printed a ticket?
ANSWER: The value returned is 0.
- Experiment with inserting different amounts of money before printing tickets. * Do you notice anything strange about the machine’s behavior? * What happens if you insert too much money into the machine – do you receive any refund? * What happens if you do not insert enough and then try to print a ticket?
ANSWER:
It acts strange. It will not refund the amount and you can still print a ticket even if the money inserted is less than the price of the ticket.
- Try to obtain a good understanding of a ticket machine’s behavior by interacting with it on the object bench before we start looking at how the
TicketMachine
class is implemented in the next section.
- Create another ticket machine for tickets of a different price. * Buy a ticket from that machine. * Does the printed ticket look different?
ANSWER: It looks different and the price of the ticket is different.
- Write out what you think the outer wrappers of the
Student
andLabClass
classes might look like – do not worry about the inner part.
ANSWER:
public class Student { statements }
class LabClass
{ statements }
Does it matter whether we write
public class TicketMachine
or
class public TicketMachine
in the outer wrapper of a class?
- Edit the source of the
TicketMachine
class to make the change and then close the editor window. * Do you notice a change in the class diagram? * What error message do you get when you now press the compile button? * Do you think this message clearly explains what is wrong?
ANSWER:
Yes the diagram changes with red stripes
expected Illegal start of expression Invalid method declaration; return type required
No the message is not clear.
- Check whether or not it is possible to leave out the word
public
from the outer wrapper of theTicketMachine
class.
ANSWER: Yes it is possible to omit public.
- From your earlier experimentation with the ticket machine objects within BlueJ you can probably remember the names of some of the methods –
printTicket
, for instance. * Look at the class definition in Code 2.1 and use this knowledge, along with the additional information about ordering we have given you, to try to make a list of the names of the fields, constructors, and methods in theTicketMachine
class. * Hint: There is only one constructor in the class.
ANSWER:
Fields are price, balance, total, ticketNumber Constructor is TicketMachine Methods are getPrice(), getBalance(), insertMoney(), printTicket(), getTicketNumber()
- Do you notice any features of the constructor that make it significantly different from the other methods of the class?
ANSWER: The constructor shares the name of the class and sets values to the object.
- What do you think is the type of each of the following fields?
private int count;
private Student representative;
private Server host;
ANSWER:
count - integer Student representative - string Server host - string
- What are the names of the following fields?
private boolean alive;
private Person tutor;
private Game game;
ANSWER: alive, tutor, game
In the following field declaration from the TicketMachine class
private int price;
does it matter which order the three words appear in?
- Edit the
TicketMachine
class to try different orderings. After each change, close the editor. * Does the appearance of the class diagram after each change give you a clue as to whether or not other orderings are possible? * Check by pressing the compile button to see if there is an error message. * Make sure that you reinstantiate the original version after your experiments!
ANSWER:
Yes the order should be private int price. The class diagrams has dashed lines and a red color due to compilation error if any other order is selected The error message are
Identifier expected Cannot find symbol - variable price
- Is it always necessary to have a semicolon at the end of a field declaration?
- Once again, experiment via the editor.
- The rule you will learn here is an important one, so be sure to remember it.
ANSWER: Yes it is important as semicolon marks the completion of a declaration or expression.
- Write in full the declaration for a field of type
int
whose name isstatus
.
ANSWER: private int status
- To what class does the following constructor belong?
public Student(String name)
ANSWER: Student
- How many parameters does the following constructor have and what are their types?
public Book(String title, double price)
ANSWER: 2 - Title which is a string and Price which is a double.
- Can you guess what types some of the
Book
class’s fields might be? - Can you assume anything about the names of its fields?
ANSWER:
Title - string Author - string Date of publication - string Price - double
READ upto and INCLUDING section 2.15 of this chapter.