Search Method for an EmployeeStore. Using HashMap

Question

I am currently making an application to store employee details such as name, id and email address. I am doing this using a HashMap. I am currently having difficulty with a searchByName,id and email address methods. How would i go about writing one ?

Here is my code:

//Imports.
import java.util.Scanner;
//********************************************************************  
public class MainApp
{
    private static Scanner keyboard = new Scanner(System.in);

    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        new MainApp().start();

    }
    public void start()
    {
        EmployeeStore Store = new EmployeeStore();
        Store.add(new Employee ("James O' Carroll", 18,"hotmail.com"));

        Store.add(new Employee ("Andy Carroll", 1171,"yahoo.com"));

        Store.add(new Employee ("Luis Suarez", 7,"gmail.com"));
        Store.print();
   }
}

//Imports.
import java.util.HashMap;
//********************************************************************
public class EmployeeStore 
{
    HashMap<String, Employee> map;

//Constructor.  
    public EmployeeStore()
    {
        map = new HashMap<String,Employee>();
    }
//********************************************************************
//Hashmap Methods.
//Add to the Hashmap : Employee.
    public void add(Employee employee)
    {

        map.put(employee.getEmployeeName(), employee);
    }
//********************************************************************
//Remove from the Hashmap : Employee.
    public void remove(String key)
    {
      //Remove the Employee by name.
        map.remove(key);
    }
//********************************************************************
//Clear the Hashmap : Employee.
    public void clear()
    {
        map.clear();
    }
    //********************************************************************
//Print the Hashmap : Employee. 
    public void print()
    {
        System.out.println("\n********Employee's in the Company.********");
        for (Employee employee : map.values())
        {
            System.out.println("Employee Name:\t" + employee.getEmployeeName());
            System.out.println("Employee Id:\t" + employee.getEmployeeId());
            System.out.println("E-mail:\t"+ employee.getEmployeeEmail());
        }

    }
    public Employee get(String name){
        return map.get(name);
    }


//********************************************************************  
//********************************************************************


}

//Imports:

//********************************************************************
//Employee Class.
public class Employee
{
//Variables.
    private String employeeName;
    private int employeeId;
    private String employeeEmail;
//********************************************************************  
//Constructor.
    public Employee(String employeeName, int employeeId, String employeeEmail) 
    {
        this.employeeName = employeeName;
        this.employeeId = employeeId;
        this.employeeEmail = employeeEmail;
    }
//********************************************************************
//Getters.
    public String getEmployeeEmail() {
        return employeeEmail;
    }
    public void setEmployeeEmail(String employeeEmail) {
        this.employeeEmail = employeeEmail;
    }
    public String getEmployeeName() {
        return employeeName;
    }
    public int getEmployeeId() {
        return employeeId;
    }
//********************************************************************
//toString method.
    public String toString() {
        return "Employee [employeeName=" + employeeName + ", employeeId="
                + employeeId + ", employeeEmail=" + employeeEmail + "]";
    }
//********************************************************************





}

Answer 1

In your EmployeeStore, you can add the various methods you mention:

1. searchByName is easy to implement because that's the key for your map, so a simple map.get(name) should do the trick
2. for the other 2, you have 2 options:
   • create one map for each type of search (so you will maintain 3 maps in parallel, one where the key is the name, one where the key is the email and one where the key is the id). Each map will contain the same employees. And you can implement the search like in 1. This is faster but uses more memory
   • loop over the values of the map ( for(Employee e : map.values()) {...} ) and check for each employee if his/her email matches the searched value