How do I make a loop inside a method in one class to call on another method in another class n Java?

Question

I have a method in class Employee called calculatePay that does calculations for certain pay and taxes.

public void calculatePay() {

    totalHoursWorked = 0;
    grossPay = 0;
    fedTax = 0;
    stateTax = 0;
    netPay = 0;
    totalTax = 0;

    for (int i = 0; i < getNoTimeCards(); i++) {

        TimeCard timeCard = getTimeCard(i);

        totalHoursWorked += timeCard.getHoursWorked();

    }

    grossPay = totalHoursWorked * payRate;

    if (grossPay >= 200) {

        fedTax = (grossPay - 200) * .1;

    } else {

        fedTax = 0;

    }

    stateTax = grossPay * .04;

    totalTax = fedTax + stateTax;

    netPay = grossPay - totalTax;

}

I need to create a method called calculatePay in another class called Company . In this method, I need to create a loop that calls on the calculatePay method in Employee . Is calling on a method in a loop any different than calling on an instance variable? Whatever I try doesn't seem to work. Here's what i currently have for the method in Company :

public void calculatePay() {
    for (int i = 0; i < noEmployees; i++) {
        Employee employee = getEmployee(i);
        employee.calculatePay(); {
            return;
        }

}
}

Any help in explaining would be great.

Answer 1

Ah, I think I see what you tried to do.

So you tried creating a function, then tried to make it return it's calculated value by using the parentheses when calling it, didn't you? However, that isn't how Java syntax works.

calculatePay() in Employee is a void function, meaning it won't return any value. In this case, you want to have it return the netPay of type double . So instead, you should define the function as:

public double calculatePay() {
    // code
    netPay = grossPay - totalTax;
    return netPay;
}

And in Company you would just do

public  calculatePay() {
    for (int i = 0; i < noEmployees; i++) {
        Employee employee = getEmployee(i);
        System.out.println(employee.calculatePay());
    }
}

Also, keep in mind this code is incomplete. If you also want calculatePay() in Company to return the total value or something, you would also need to change it's return type to double .

Answer 2

I think your code should have two lists, one of employees and other of time cards.

public void calculatePay() 
{
    ...
   totalHoursWorked = getHoursWorked();
    ...
}

public void calculateEmployeesPay() 
{
    for(final Employee emp : EmployeeList)
    {
       emp.calculatePay(); 
    }
}

public double getHoursWorked()
{ 
    double totalHoursWorked = 0.0;

    for (final TimeCard tc : TimeCardList)
    {
        totalHoursWorked += tc.getHoursWorked();
    }
    return totalHoursWorked;
}

if calculatePay() is void then netPay must changed to be an instance variable instead of a local.