searching and comparing a record

[roidbeginner]

I am still at beginner stage in c++ and I am always curious about good/best coding method.

let's say I have a program which allows a users to edit the salary of a employee.

1)The system will prompt the user which to key in a employee's name first.
2)The system will then check whether the username exist anot.
3)If the username existed, the system will then allow the user to change the employee's
salary.

the salary and the name of the person is stored in a text file.

e.g employeeInfo.txt formatted by(name salary)

john 1000
mary 2000
bob 3000

user.h

#ifndef user_user_h
#define user_user_h
#include <iostream>

class  user  {

public:

    user(std::string userName,std::string salary);

    std::string getUserName();
    std::string getSalary();

    void setUserName(std::string userName);
    void setSalary(std::string salary);


private:
    std::string userName,salary;

};
#endif

user.cpp

#include "user.h"
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;

user::user(string userName,string salary)  {

    setUserName(userName);
    setSalary(salary);


};

string user::getUserName()    {
    return userName;
}
string user::getSalary()  {
    return salary;
}

void user::setUserName(std::string userName) {
    this->userName = userName;
}

void user::setSalary(std::string salary) {
    this->salary = salary;
}

main.cpp

#include "user.h"
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <fstream>
#include <sstream>
#include <vector>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
using namespace std;


int main(){
    vector<user> userDetails;
    string line;
    string userName;
    string salary;

    ifstream readFile("employeeInfo.txt");

    while(getline(readFile,line))   {
        stringstream iss(line);
        iss >> userName >> salary;

        //consturctor
        user employeeDetails(userName,
                             salary
                             );
        userDetails.push_back(employeeDetails);

    }
    readFile.close();

    string name;
    cout << "Please enter a user name\n";
    cin >> name;

    for (int i =0; i<userDetails.size(); i++) {
        //search if there's a match
        if (userDetails[i].getUserName() == name) {
            string newSalary;

            cout << "Please enter a new salary" << endl;
            cin >> newSalary;
            userDetails[i].setSalary(newSalary);
        }
    }
    //display to see if the salary gets updated
    for (int i=0; i<userDetails.size(); i++) {
        cout << userDetails[i].getSalary << "\n";
    }
}

well my question is I am not really sure if my code(shown below) is the worst method to search for a record in a vector and match it against the input of the user
and I would like to know is there any way to improve my codes and gather some tips and ideas from you guys if this is the worst method to search for a record in a vector.
thanks.

//search for existing username
for (int i =0; i<userDetails.size(); i++) {
            if (userDetails[i].getUserName() == name) {
                //do stuff
            }
        }

[phorce]

Hey,

Just a quick note. It's probably not effective to store the salary as a string. Why is this?

You take advantage of STL's map structure.

It works something like this:

You have two types of data (esentially) which could be represented inside a map..

std::map<string, float> employees; 

employees["Phorce"] = 150000;
employees["Foo"]    = 10.00;

Now let's say you wanted to find a record, and, how much they earn. (Using C++11 but I'm sure there are older versions that are very similar to this):

auto it = employees.find("Phorce");

for (it != employees.end()) 
    std::cout << "Phorce" << it->second << "\n";

// Would/should display the slary for Phorce

Notes about your code:

 //constructor
 user employeeDetails(userName,
                             salary
                             );

This is not a constructor. This is initialising an object of the contstructor.

Your current method for searching looks through each iteration once, until it's found the match. This approach might not be ideal, since, if you have a large collection of data then it will become slower and sluggy.

Again, why re-invent the wheel? STL has a function which already handles searching; since you are using a vector it could look something like this:

#include <algorithm>

if (std::find(employees.begin(), employees.end(), "Phorce") != employees.end())
{
   // Found
}

Hope this helps some.

[roidbeginner]

Many Thanks for your kind explainations. It sure helped me

[phorce]

Whoaa too many replies!

Good luck with your project

[roidbeginner]

Ooops. I guess something went wrong when I clicked the 'Submit your reply' just now haha

[Dani]

Accidental duplicates removed. :)