Properly storing information

I was hoping someone could enlighten me on the topic.

Essentially my question is what is the most efficient way of storing player data?

Arraylists/Hashmaps etc. (This just doesn't seem like a clean way of doing it for some reason.)

Or should I be implementing getters/setters to hold the information?

 

Mrwinkles
Make a class that stores player data and attributes. Make a HashMap that stores the player data object to the player (Like a "manager" class)

 

Gater12 Mrwinkles Well I think it would depend on how much data you are planning on storing. I mean if it's only a few then there really is no reason to create another class unless it's for organizational purposes.

 

So I created a class to store specific variables about each player such as admin/vip/muted etc but I don't think I'm doing it correctly as the variables are overwritten every time a new player connects.

Gater12 jthort Any idea?

 

Mrwinkles

Can we see the code for it?

 

At the top of the class:

Code:

nPlayer nPlayer;

On PlayerJoinEvent I have:

Code:

nPlayer = new nPlayer(player.getName());

The nPlayer class iteself:

Code:

public class nPlayer {
    private String name;
    private boolean muted;
    private boolean admin;
    private boolean mod;
    private boolean pvp;
 
    public nPlayer(String name) {
        name = name;
        muted = false;
        admin = false;
    }
}

 

Mrwinkles Your going to want to do

Code:

this.name = name

in your constructor, along with muted and admin.

Also you have a variable named the same as your class, make it something like

Code:

NewPlayer nPlayer = NewPlayer(...);

Another thing, you have a variable in your PlayerJoinEvent, and everytime you are setting that variable to the NEW nPlayer object. To hold all the new player objects your going to want to use a List.

 

Ah yes, thanks for the tips.

As for the list.. something a little along the lines of..

Code:

public ArrayList<NewPlayer> nPlayerList = new ArrayList<NewPlayer>();

on PlayerJoinEvent:

Code:

nPlayerList.add(nPlayer);

And then when I need a specific player I just iterate through the list and set the variable using one the methods written to get the variables in the NewPlayer class:

Code:

for (NewPlayer nPlayer : nPlayerList) {
    if (nPlayer.getName() == player.getName()) {
        nPlayer.setAdmin(true);
    }
}

??

 

Mrwinkles use a hashmap. HashMap<String,NewPlayer>

 

I managed to get it to work but I agree that I should be using a HashMap thanks.

 

Th erected is re

Ally no need for hash maps when you can just created a function that iterates through the list and checks the name but whatever works

 

Code:

public NewPlayer getNewPlayer(String playername) {
        for (NewPlayer nPlayer : nPlayerList) {
            if (nPlayer.getName() == playername) {
              return nPlayer;
            }
        }
        return null;
    }

Wouldn't a hasmap be more efficient as you could just refer to the key which would be the players name and get the NewPlayer instance from it?

 

Please don't use the == operator for object comparisons, it compares references to objects and not the actual logical implementation of what makes two objects equal. Use the equals(Object) method instead. And yes, HashMaps in particular are much more efficient than iterating over a Collection, since HashMap lookups are much closer to O(1) than O(n)

 

Mrwinkles
Couldn't you just iterate through the list of instances then check each one if name equals the player's name?

 

Mrwinkles

You might want to take a look at Serialization. It's very useful for serializing and deserializing data to YAML configuration files. In your case, you could implement ConfigurationSerializable on your NewPlayer class.

It would be useful to check this Bukkit Wiki section on Configuration Serialization and Deserialization.

 

You're right. I have gone ahead and made the appropriate changes thanks!

Dragonphase I will definitely keep that in mind though maybe I should use something like mysql for the NewPlayer class data?