How do I accept user input with a instance variable of another class?

Question

I have an assignment for college in which we must serialize a subclass called Current . we must ask a user to enter details for a new Current account so it can be serialized.

I have a class hierarchy built up with the Account class being the super class. It should be possible to add, view , list, edit and delete Current objects. We can't ask the user to add their account number as that is done via a static variable. eg: **accountNo** = **nextAvailableNumber++** ;

I have to take in the users name and dateOpened details and I have already written a Name class but the Name class has a variable of type Name called name so i cant use it as a String in the subclass. It is giving me a mismatch exception, cannot convert String to Name and mismatch exception, cannot convert from int to Date for dateOpened .

My question then is. If I have to take user input. should i be using the name variable of Type Name in the Name class to take input and should i be doing the same with the **dateOpened** variable of type Date ? Should i be casting. Here is my code, its a menu based system that allows a user to set up an account.

// Name class with name variable of type Name && Date variable **dateOpened** of type Date.

package ie.lyit.bank;

public abstract class Account
{
    protected Name name;        // COMPOSITION - Account HAS-A name (object of class Name)
    protected String address;   
    protected double balance;
    protected Date dateOpened;  // COMPOSITION - Account HAS-A dateOpened (object of class Date)
    protected int accountNo;

    private static int nextUniqueNumber = 1;    // Next available unique Account number 

    // Default Constructor - set Instance Variables to null
    public Account()
    {
        name = new Name();      
        address= new String();  // OR address = ""; OR address = null;
        balance = 0.0;      
        dateOpened = new Date();
        // Set accountNo to static nextUniqueNumber & increment it for next accountNo
        accountNo = nextUniqueNumber++; 
    }

    // Current class with read() method
    // Read method to read in the account details from the user

    public void read()
    {
        Scanner keyboardIn = new Scanner(System.in);        
        System.out.println("ENTER ACCOUNT DETAILS ==>");
        System.out.print("ACCOUNT NAME : ");
        name = keyboardIn.nextLine();
        System.out.print("ACCOUNT ADDRESS : ");
        address = keyboardIn.nextLine();
        System.out.print("ACCOUNT BALANCE : ");
        balance = keyboardIn.nextDouble();
        System.out.print("ACCOUNT DATE OPENED : ");
        dateOpened = keyboardIn.nextInt();
    }
}

Answer 1

You dont need to use Name type, You can simply declare it as String and access it as class variable.

If you have a derived class say xyz who needs to access name variable of superclass say Account.

You can access it like Account.Name saying you have defined it as below.

class Account
{
 protected String Name;

}

class xyz extends Account
{
// here u can access using Account.Name; 
}