Search Method for an EmployeeStore. Using HashMap

[pendo826]

0 down vote favorite

I am currently making an application to store employee details such as name, id and email address. I am doing this using a HashMap. I am currently having difficulty with a searchByName,id and email address methods. How would i go about writing one ?

Here is my code:

//Imports.
import java.util.Scanner;
//********************************************************************  
public class MainApp
{
    private static Scanner keyboard = new Scanner(System.in);

    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        new MainApp().start();

    }
    public void start()
    {
        EmployeeStore Store = new EmployeeStore();
        Store.add(new Employee ("James O' Carroll", 18,"hotmail.com"));

        Store.add(new Employee ("Andy Carroll", 1171,"yahoo.com"));

        Store.add(new Employee ("Luis Suarez", 7,"gmail.com"));
        Store.print();
   }
}

//Imports.
import java.util.HashMap;
//********************************************************************
public class EmployeeStore 
{
    HashMap<String, Employee> map;

//Constructor.  
    public EmployeeStore()
{
        map = new HashMap<String,Employee>();
    }
//********************************************************************
//Hashmap Methods.
//Add to the Hashmap : Employee.
    public void add(Employee employee)
    {

        map.put(employee.getEmployeeName(), employee);
    }
//********************************************************************
//Remove from the Hashmap : Employee.
    public void remove(String key)
    {
      //Remove the Employee by name.
        map.remove(key);
    }
//********************************************************************
//Clear the Hashmap : Employee.
    public void clear()
    {
        map.clear();
    }
    //********************************************************************
//Print the Hashmap : Employee. 
    public void print()
    {
        System.out.println("\n********Employee's in the Company.********");
        for (Employee employee : map.values())
        {
            System.out.println("Employee Name:\t" + employee.getEmployeeName());
            System.out.println("Employee Id:\t" + employee.getEmployeeId());
            System.out.println("E-mail:\t"+ employee.getEmployeeEmail());
        }

    }
    public Employee get(String name){
        return map.get(name);
    }


//********************************************************************  
//********************************************************************


}

//Imports:

//********************************************************************
//Employee Class.
public class Employee
{
//Variables.
    private String employeeName;
    private int employeeId;
    private String employeeEmail;
//********************************************************************  
//Constructor.
    public Employee(String employeeName, int employeeId, String employeeEmail) 
    {
        this.employeeName = employeeName;
        this.employeeId = employeeId;
        this.employeeEmail = employeeEmail;
    }
//********************************************************************
//Getters.
    public String getEmployeeEmail() {
        return employeeEmail;
    }
    public void setEmployeeEmail(String employeeEmail) {
        this.employeeEmail = employeeEmail;
    }
    public String getEmployeeName() {
        return employeeName;
    }
    public int getEmployeeId() {
        return employeeId;
    }
//********************************************************************
//toString method.
    public String toString() {
        return "Employee [employeeName=" + employeeName + ", employeeId="
                + employeeId + ", employeeEmail=" + employeeEmail + "]";
    }
//********************************************************************





}

[JamesCherrill]

Search by name you already have from the map itself. For the others you have to loop through all the Employee values in the map testing each Employee to see if it has the desired values.

[NormR1]

Are you asking how to find a record using any one of several keys: name, id, email address?
If you must use HashMaps, and all the keys are unique, then you could store references to the same record as the value using the different keys.

[JamesCherrill]

HashMaps work best when the keys are not subject to change - so id is presumably fixed, and is ideal, name is mostly fixed (except when some women get married), email address is less ideal (subject to more change). The problem when you update an Employee with (say) a new email address is that you need to know that email address is used as a key in some HashMap somewhere, and you have to update the HashMap as well.
For the fields that don't change, bulding a HashMap gives you a very quick and easy search mechanism, but for fields that do change it's safer to do an explicit search.