Let’s go over the basics:
“Accessor” and “Mutator” are just fancy names fot a getter and a setter.
A getter, “Accessor”, returns a class’s variable or its value. A setter, “Mutator”, sets a class variable pointer or its value.
So first you need to set up a class with some variables to get/set:
public class IDCard
{
private String mName;
private String mFileName;
private int mID;
}
But oh no! If you instantiate this class the default values for these variables will be meaningless.
B.T.W. “instantiate” is a fancy word for doing:
IDCard test = new IDCard();
So – let’s set up a default constructor, this is the method being called when you “instantiate” a class.
public IDCard()
{
mName = “”;
mFileName = “”;
mID = -1;
}
But what if we do know the values we wanna give our variables? So let’s make another constructor, one that takes parameters:
public IDCard(String name, int ID, String filename)
{
mName = name;
mID = ID;
mFileName = filename;
}
Wow – this is nice. But stupid. Because we have no way of accessing (=reading) the values of our variables. So let’s add a getter, and while we’re at it, add a setter as well:
public String getName()
{
return mName;
}
public void setName( String name )
{
mName = name;
}
Nice. Now we can access mName. Add the rest of the accessors and mutators and you’re now a certified Java newbie.
Good luck.
You need to remove the static from your accessor methods – these methods need to be instance methods and access the instance variables
public class IDCard {
public String name, fileName;
public int id;
public IDCard(final String name, final String fileName, final int id) {
this.name = name;
this.fileName = fileName
this.id = id;
}
public String getName() {
return name;
}
}
You can the create an IDCard and use the accessor like this:
final IDCard card = new IDCard();
card.getName();
Each time you call new a new instance of the IDCard will be created and it will have it’s own copies of the 3 variables.
If you use the static keyword then those variables are common across every instance of IDCard.
A couple of things to bear in mind:
don’t add useless comments – they add code clutter and nothing else.
conform to naming conventions, use lower case of variable names – name not Name.