Thread: Conditional statements on Array list objects

New to arrayLists and confused.

I have 2 classes. One is Property the other is Letting Agent.

Property creates property objects with 7 private variables. Letting Agent creates an arrayList of property objects.

I have managed to use external method calls to methods in the Property class in the Letting Agent class to update objects in my arrayList.

Now I am trying to implement a property search method in Letting Agent that takes 3 parameters and checks them against 3 of the fields of each object in my arrayList until one that matches all three is found. I am doing this using a while loop.

The problem I am having is that the while loop needs to contain an if/else statement that performs comparisons of the 3 parameters taken when the method is called to the values stored within the fields of that object.

public void propertySearch( char location, double maxMonthlyRent, int minNumberOfBedrooms)
{
int index = 0;
boolean propertyFound = false;
while(!propertyFound && index < properties.size())
{
Property property = properties.get(index);
if(location == property.location && maxMonthlyRent >= property.monthlyRent)// and same for bedrooms
{
property.displayProperty( // this method is in my Property class
propertyFound = true;
}
else
{
index++;
}

}


The problem is that I cannot perform my comparison as the fields of the Property class are private and I amsure that they were supposed to stay this way. Is there another way of me performing my if/else statement against the fields of the objects in my arraylist in the Letting Agents class?

I ONLY need to perform a comparison not actually alter the data stored in the fields in any way so I was thinking that there might be a way of getting the values of the fields that I am overlooking.

This has me really stuck so would really appreciate it if someone can give me kick in the right direction. Please ask me if you need to know more.

Thanks

Yes it has methods like this for each field of the Property class

public double getRentOwed()
{
return rentOwed
}

I think I can see where this is going. Do I have to call that method in my LettingAgent class in
order to perform comparisons with the value stored in rentOwed?

eg.

double rentOwed= property.getRentOwed()
if( rentOwed == null || 0)
{
statement
}

I'm going to try that for now. I thought that return statement were just for returning the value to the user
but can they also be used to return the value to another class?

Thanks