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Joseph frank
Courses Plus Student 764 PointsHow does getColor actually work?
I barely completed the GoKart challenge in java (only by seeing a correctly coded example from a mod) and i'm am confused as to how getColor works. I worked on that challenge for over an hour and was blown away when I actually found the correct coding. Does Java have a built in color palette that returns correct syntax? I don't understand how Java knew that "purple" was a color. I feel like i'm progressing but, missing a lot of things I should know.
2 Answers
Mahmoud Yousif
5,053 PointsIt's been a while since I did this, but what I remember for this course, it was part of the code challenges was to create a GoKart object, that took the parameter of a color in the form of a string. When you first create a GoKart object you call this line of code:
GoKart goKart = new Gokart("Purple")
This Gokart object has taken the string value of "Purple" as a parameter, not the actual color purple as you suggested. The getColor method that belongs to this GoKart returns the string that was declared on creation of the object, in this case purple. You can further understand this, if you look at your code for the GoKart class, and look at the constructor you created and the variable it takes. And then look at the output the getColor method produces, and you should notice it returns the same variable.
Joseph frank
Courses Plus Student 764 Pointsso as I understand it... getColor isn't actually using a color palette or some other magic, it's simply "getting" the first parameter you have under GoKart. I believe my confusion came from thinking that getColor was only for use on picking out colors and not for Strings?
I appreciate the feedback.
Mahmoud Yousif
5,053 PointsExactly, the fact that this string is the name of a color means nothing to Java, but rather it's just the user that extracts meaning from this word as a color.
Mark VonGyer
21,239 PointsMark VonGyer
21,239 Pointshi there.
You created a public class GoKart.
in this you created a private member variable; mColor.
This means only the GoKart class can see and change the value.
Therefore in order to retrieve the color value from another class you need to create a method which returns the private mColor variable.
This method is a string,
public String getColor() { return mColor;}
later you will call on this method. to do this you would use the instance of the class (lets say I created a new goKart called cart).
cart.getColor();
This would return the color stored in the private variable from any class you like!