Java: Creating a by a String named Object

Question

I would like to make a few Objects and then add them to a HastMap. I dont want to name all of these Objects by Hand so I would do it in a for Loop. Any ways to solve this ?

I meant `Map map`. You create your object and a string and add to map. But why do you want to do this — Thiyagu, Sep 05 '15 at 16:36
I wanted to acces it via a HashMap but I want do randomly create 20 Objects — battler3d, Sep 05 '15 at 16:38
If you want to access it via a Map what should your key be? Why don't you put them in a List? — Thiyagu, Sep 05 '15 at 16:40
What do you mean by *random object*? Like 1st may be of `class A` the second of `class B` and so on? — Blip, Sep 05 '15 at 16:42

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:44

What you are looking for is called a "variable variable". Java doesn't support these, but some languages, like PHP, do. You can create a HashMap of objects with generated keys, however, like this:

Map<String, Object> map = new HashMap<String, Object>;
// makes a HashMap of strings to objects;
// if you want to use something else for the keys,
// you can change the first type name between the <>

map.put("key", object);
//adds an object to the HashMap for the key "key"

and then get the objects back from the map like this:

map.get("key");
//will return object

If you want to do this in a for loop, you'd do something like this:

Map<String, Object> map = new HashMap<String, Object>;
String[] keys = {"foo", "bar", "food", "bard", "fooley", "barley"};
for(int i = 0; i < keys.length; i++) {
    map.put(keys[i], myObject);
}

This answer is a way to generate those strings randomly.

Java: Creating a by a String named Object

1 Answers1