How do I create random number?

By Wayan in Core API, Lang Package 1 Comment

The java.lang.Math.random() method returns random number between 0.0 and 1.0 including 0.0 but not including 1.0. By multiplying Math.random() result with a number, for example 10 will give us a range of random number between 0.0 and 10.0.

To get a random number between two numbers (n and m) we can use the formula of: n + (Math.random() * (m - n)). Where n is the lowest number (inclusive) and m is the highest number (exclusive).

package org.kodejava.lang;

public class RandomNumberExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // The Math.random() returns a random number between 0.0 and 1.0 
        // including 0.0 but not including 1.0.
        double number = Math.random();
        System.out.println("Generated number: " + number);

        // By multiplying Math.random() result with a number will give
        // us a range of random number between, for instance 0.0 to 10.0 as
        // shown in the example below.
        number = Math.random() * 10;
        System.out.println("Generated number: " + number);

        // To get a random number between n and m we can use the formula:
        // n + (Math.random() * (m - n)). The example below creates random
        // number between 100.0 and 200.0.
        int n = 100;
        int m = 200;
        number = n + (Math.random() * (m - n));
        System.out.println("Generated number: " + number);

        // Creates an integer random number
        int random = 100 + (int) (Math.random() * 100);
        System.out.println("Generated number: " + random);
    }
}

Here is an example result of our program.

Generated number: 0.024974902600698234
Generated number: 2.271051510086771
Generated number: 147.542543014888
Generated number: 112

How do I check if a string is a valid number?

By Wayan in Core API, Lang Package 0 Comment

When building a computer program we will use a lot of string to represent our data. The data might not just information about our customer name, email or address, but will also contain numeric data represented as string. So how do we know if this string contains a valid number?

Java provides some wrappers to the primitive data types that can be used to do the checking. These wrappers come with the parseXXX() method such as Integer.parseInt(), Float.parseFloat() and Double.parseDouble() methods.

package org.kodejava.lang;

public class NumericParsingExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String age = "15";
        String height = "160.5";
        String weight = "55.9";

        try {
            int theAge = Integer.parseInt(age);
            float theHeight = Float.parseFloat(height);
            double theWeight = Double.parseDouble(weight);

            System.out.println("Age    = " + theAge);
            System.out.println("Height = " + theHeight);
            System.out.println("Weight = " + theWeight);
        } catch (NumberFormatException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

In the example code we use Integer.parseInt(), Float.parseFloat(), Double.parseDouble() methods to check the validity of our numeric data. If the string is not a valid number java.lang.NumberFormatException will be thrown.

The result of our example:

Age    = 15
Height = 160.5
Weight = 55.9