Methods to generate random PrintCard

Question

I need to use public static void PrintCard (int number, int suit) as the header in my program to print 5 random cards (number & suit) example "Ace of Spades".

I'm not entirely sure where to go about it, but I was wondering if there was a way to make a randomly generated number = Ace or etc., because Ace isn't a variable I get a error.

example: 0 = Ace (won't work because variable on wrong side) and

number == 0
return Ace;

those are things I've tried, sorry if its really broad or etc. I'm just pretty lost and novice when it comes to coding.

edit:

#  Card
_______
0  Ace 
1  Two
2  Three
3  Four
4  Five
5  Six
6  Seven
7  Eight
8  Nine
9  Ten
10 Jack
11 Queen
12 King

#  Suit
_______
0 Spaces
1 Hearts
2 Clubs
3 Diamonds

Structure of your program

---

import....

class {

  main method {
    num
    suit

    loop {
      loop 5x {
         num = generate random number 0-12
         suit = generate random number 0-3
         PrintCard (num, suit)
      }
      Prompt the user to continue
      read input from the user into a string
      if (input is yes)
         stay inside this loop, otherwise get out
     }
  }

  PrintCard (number, suit) {
    switch (number)
      // print the word for the card value
    print " of "
    switch (suit)
      // print the word for the card suit
  }

}

Answer 1

You could put the face and suit names into String arrays, and then pick a random entry from each array. First, you'd need a way to pick an item at random from an array. Something like,

private static Random rand = new Random();
public static <T> T randomEntry(T[] arr) {
    return (arr != null) ? arr[rand.nextInt(arr.length)] : null;
}

Then you could generate card names and add them to a LinkedHashSet (to preserve insertion order) until you have 5 entries,

String[] names = { "Ace", "Deuce", "Trey", "Four", "Five", "Six",
        "Seven", "Eight", "Nine", "Ten", "Jack", "Queen", "King" };
String[] suits = { "Spades", "Clubs", "Hearts", "Diamonds" };
Set<String> cards = new LinkedHashSet<>();
while (cards.size() < 5) {
    cards.add(String.format("%s of %s", randomEntry(names), 
        randomEntry(suits)));
}

Then your output is just

for (String card : cards) {
    System.out.println(card);
}

Answer 2

Before you start to write code i suggest you to do some planning using classic pen and paper. There is several steps, that you can go through that will help you to simplify your work.
First, write down WHAT you want your program to have. In your example it can be like this:

• Generating random suit of a card
• Generating random number of a card
• Storing generated cards
• Storing generated cards in group of 5
• Printing out the results

Next step after you did this is to ask and answer guestion HOW you can do things written in the list. For example:

• How to generate random suit or number? Java has a class called Random. All the methods could be found here.

• How to store generated card? Java has lot's of utilities to store sets of data. For example ArrayList. All the methods and info could be found here.

There are 13 cards in suit. There are 4 suits. So you must have two ArrayList to store all the naming of cards and suits.
You must generate 2 different integers: 0-12 and 0-3.
You must store generated card in another ArrayList so you can access it later.
Loop process, as far as you can do this there is nothing in printing out the results taken from Array.

UPD1 code example:
Here is example of a code you may need:

    //variables to store generated card as string

    private String generatedCard;
   //create Array list for suits
  ArrayList<String> suits = new ArrayList<>();
  //fill the List
  suits.add("spades"); //index no [0]
  suits.add("hearts");
  suits.add("diamonds");
  suits.add("clubs"); //index no [3]
  //create Array list for numbers
   ArrayList<String> numbers = new ArrayList<>(); 
  //fill the list
   - - - -
  //create ArrayList for generated Cards
   ArrayList<String> cards = new ArrayList<>();
  //create Randomiser
    Random rnd = new Random();
  for (int i = 0; i <5; i++){
        generatedCard = ""+suits.get( rnd.nextInt(4)) + " " + numbers.get(rnd.nextInt(13)); 
      cards.add(i, generatedCard);
  }   

For printing out use for loop with System.out.println(cards.get(indexer));