why not just use a addItem method. You jsut have to creat your Item object on the outside and pass it in.
I'm already doing this, I pass in any Item or subclass of Item. The code then needs to copy the item or make a new item based on the items subclass constructor.
private int Create(Item item, int quantity) throws InventoryFullException {
if(inventoryList.size() < noSlots) {
switch(item.getType()) {
case empty:
inventoryList.add(new Item(Item.ItemType.empty, quantity)); break;
case demoItem:
inventoryList.add(new Item(Item.ItemType.demoItem, quantity)); break;
default: System.out.println("Please define a create case for new item: " + item.getType().toString() + "."); break;
}
If item is not a class hierarchy, then you don't need to switch. You can just pass item.getType() to the constructor of the new Item.
private int Create(Item item, int quantity) throws InventoryFullException {
if(inventoryList.size() < noSlots) {
inventoryList.add(new Item(item.getType(), quantity));
If it is (or will be) a hierarchy, what trouble is the clone method causing you? Are you implementing Cloneable? If you want deep copy semantics, have you written a custom clone() implementation. Remember to use a covariant return type (public Item clone()) to avoid ugly casts elsewhere in your code.
