Lab Assignment 5
More Classes and Objects

Lab Objectives

· Be able to write a copy constructor

· Be able to write equals and toString methods

· Be able to use objects made up of other objects (aggregation)

· Be able to write methods that pass and return objects

Introduction

We discussed objects in Chapter 6, and we modeled a television in the Chapter 6 lab. We

want build on that lab, and work more with objects. This time, the object that we are

choosing is more complicated. It is made up of other objects. This is called aggregation.

A credit card is an object that is very common, but not as simple as a television.

Attributes of the credit card include information about the owner, as well as a balance and

credit limit. These things would be our instance fields. A credit card allows you to make

payments and charges. These would be methods. As we have seen before, there would

also be other methods associated with this object in order to construct the object and

access its fields.

Examine the UML diagram that follows. Notice that the instance fields in the

CreditCard class are other types of objects: a Person object and a Money object.

We can say that the CreditCard object “has a” Person object, which means

aggregation, and the Person object “has a” Address object as one of its instance

fields. This aggregation structure can create a very complicated object. We will try to

keep this lab reasonably simple.

To start with, we will be editing a partially written class, Money. The constructor that
you will be writing is a copy constructor. This means it should create a new object, but

with the same values in the instance variables as the object that is being copied.

Next, we will write the equals and toString methods. These are very common
methods that are needed when you write a class to model an object. You will also see a

compareTo method that is also a common method for objects.

After we have finished the Money class, we will write a CreditCard class. This class

contains Money objects, so you will use the methods that you have written to complete

the Money class. The CreditCard class will explore passing objects and the possible

security problems associated with it. We will use the copy constructor we wrote for the

Money class to create new objects with the same information to return to the user

through the accessor methods.

Copyright © 2022, Dallas College.

Copyright © 2022, Dallas College.

Copyright © 2022, Dallas College.

Task #1 Writing a Copy Constructor

1. Copy the files Address.java (Code Listing 8.1), Person.java (Code Listing 8.2),

Money.java (Code Listing 8.3), MoneyDemo.java (Code Listing 8.4), and

CreditCardDemo.java (Code Listing 8.5) from the Student CD or as directed by

your instructor. Address.java, Person.java, MoneyDemo.java, and

CreditCardDemo.java are complete and will not need to be modified. We

will start by modifying Money.java.

2. Overload the constructor. The constructor that you will write will be a copy

constructor. It should use the parameter Money object to make a duplicate

Money object, by copying the value of each instance variable from the parameter

object to the instance variable of the new object.

Task #2 Writing the equals and toString methods

1. Write and document an equals method. The method compares the instance
variables of the calling object with instance variables of the parameter object for

equality and returns true if the dollars and the cents of the calling object

are the same as the dollars and the cents of the parameter object. Otherwise,

it returns false.

2. Write and document a toString method. This method will return a String

that looks like currency, including the dollar sign. Remember that if you have less

than 10 cents, you will need to put a 0 before printing the cents so that it

appears correctly with 2 decimal places.

3. Compile, debug, and test by running the MoneyDemo program. You should get

the following output:
The current amount is $500.00

Adding $10.02 gives $510.02

Subtracting $10.88 gives $499.14

$10.02 equals $10.02

$10.88 does not equal $10.02

Task #3 Passing and Returning Objects

1. Create the CreditCard class according to the UML diagram. It should have

data fields that include an owner of type Person, a balance of type Money,

and a creditLimit of type Money.

2. It should have a constructor that has two parameters, a reference to a Person

object to initialize the owner and a reference to a Money object to initialize the

creditLimit. The balance can be initialized to a Money object with a value

of zero. Remember you are passing in objects (passed by reference), so you are

passing the memory address of an object. If you want your CreditCard to have

its own creditLimit and balance, you should create a new object of each

using the copy constructor in the Money class.

Copyright © 2022, Dallas College.

3. It should have accessor methods to get the balance and the creditLimit.
Since these are Money objects (passed by reference), we don’t want to create a
security issue by passing out addresses to components in our CreditCard class,
so we must return a new object with the same values. Again, use the copy
constructor to create a new object of type Money that can be returned.

4. It should have an accessor method to get the information about the owner, but in
the form of a String that can be printed out. This can be done by calling the
toString method for the owner (an instance of the Person class).

5. It should have a method that will charge to the CreditCard by adding the
amount passed in the parameter to the balance, but only if it will not exceed
the creditLimit. If the creditLimit will be exceeded, the amount
should not be added, and an error message can be printed to the console.

6. It should have a method that will make a payment on the CreditCard by
subtracting the amount passed in the parameter from the balance.

7. Compile, debug, and test it out completely by running the CreditCardDemo
program.

8. You should get output that looks like this:
Diane Christie, 237J Harvey Hall, Menomonie, WI 54751

Balance: $0.00

Credit Limit: $1000.00

Attempting to charge $200.00

Charge: $200.00

Balance: $200.00

Attempting to charge $10.02

Charge: $10.02

Balance: $210.02

Attempting to pay $25.00

Payment: $25.00

Balance: $185.02

Attempting to charge $990.00

Exceeds credit limit

Balance: $185.02

Attempting to charge $814.98

Charge: $814.98

Balance: $1000.00