如何使用String数组中的用户输入来调用其他对象的方法？

Question

So, I am writing a simple game in Java and there are multiple skills that a user can use. Below is an example of a skill instantiated and named "a". In my main method, I instantiated many skills all with names of lowercase letters to make it easy. Then I asked the user which skills they would like to use and they would choose them by typing in lower case letters that corresponded with the skill.

String[] playerSkill = new String[3];
Skill a = new Skill("One", "Two", 3);
System.out.println("Type in a lowercase letter corresponding to each skill.");
System.out.println("a. " + a.getName() + " - " + a.toString());

The user types in "a".

playerSkill[0] = scan.next();
System.out.println(playerSkill[0].getName());

The problem is that the playerSkill[0] is a String and cannot be used to call an object method. I get the compiler error "Cannot find symbol- method getName()".

Below is the code for my Skill class:

public class Skill {
private String name;
private String description;
private int power;

public Skill(String n, String d, int p) {
    name = n;
    description = d;
    power = p;
}

public String getName() {
    return name;
}

public String toString() {
    return description;
}

Since each String has the exact same name as the Skill objects, I thought calling the getName() method would work but the types seem to be incompatible. What would be the best way to work around this problem?

Answer 1

You could use a key/value to associate a Skill object with a String "id", something like this:

    HashMap<String, Skill> hash = new HashMap<String, Skill>();
    Skill a = new Skill("One", "Two", 3); 
    hash.put(playerSkill[0], a);  // Add all your skill objects to this map
    System.out.println(hash.get(playerSkill[0]).getName());

Answer 2

Okay, so you have a random string the user typed in ("a"). And you have a variable you call "a". There is no relationship between these.

The easiest solution is a series of if-statements.

if (playerSkill[0].equals("a")) {
    System.out.println(a.getName());
}
else if playerSkill[0].equals("b")) {
    System.out.println(a.getName());
}

This is gross, but it works. A better way would be to stuff all your Skill objects into an array and iterate over the array to find the one that corresponds to the one you want.