Getting object values from a LinkedHashMap

Question

So for my local data structure I have the following

DataStructure ds = new DataStructure();
 //Examples to put in the Data Structure "ds"
 ds.menu_item.put("Pizza", new DescItems("A Pizza",2.50,4));
 ds.menu_item.put("Hot Dog", new DescItems("A yummy hot dog",3.50, 3));
 ds.menu_item.put("Corn Dog", new DescItems("A corny dog",3.00));
 ds.menu_item.put("Unknown Dish", new DescItems(3.25));

The DataStructure class has a LinkedHashMap implementation such that

LinkedHashMap<String, DescItems> menu_item = new LinkedHashMap<String, DescItems>();

And finally the DescItems class is

public final String itemDescription;
public final double itemPrice;
public final double itemRating;
public DescItems(String itemDescription, double itemPrice, double itemRating){
 this.itemDescription = itemDescription;
 this.itemPrice = itemPrice;
 this.itemRating = itemRating;
}

There are other constructors to account for no itemDescription and/or itemRating

I'm trying to apply a method to check to see if a value has itemRating other than 0 (0 indicating no rating)

But specifically I came across this problem:

DescItems getC1 = (DescItems)ds.menu_item.get("Pizza");
 System.out.println(getC1.toString());

Only prints out reference information like DescItems@142D091

What should I do to get a specific object variable instead of referencing the object?

Answer 1

You need to Override the toString() method in DescItems

Something like this:

@Override
public String toString() {
 return itemDescription + " " + itemPrice + currencySymbol + " (" + itemRating + ")";
}

Answer 2

You can override the toString() method in your DescItems class. For example:

public class DescItems {
 . . .
 @Override
 public String toString() {
 // whatever you want here
 return String.format("%1$s (price: $%2$.2f; rating: %3$f)",
 itemDescription, itemPrice, itemRating);
 }
}

The default implementation of toString() returns an object identification string like what you are seeing.

An alternative is to print the exact field(s) you want:

System.out.println(getC1.itemDescription);

Answer 3

You just need to override the toString() method to return the text that you want.