A enter text

enter text values to customise user and device

program requirement

A device like a smart speaker will usually be set up the owner, perhaps with the details like the owner’s name and the device used to control the smart speaker, for example a smartphone or table.

This program should ask the owner to enter and store text values for the owner’s name and personal device to set up a new smart speaker.

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learning point

a user can enter data for the program to store by using a keyboard.

a java program must include code to enable keyboard input.

data entry can then happen as a dialog where the user is prompted for input by a message displayed on the console.

when the user types characters as a response they are stored in a variable as a text value

the default for entering and storing a value is text, (numbers and other data types need additional code and will be introduced later in the tutorials).

user interface

Here is an an example of a simple dialog where the user is asked to enter a name.

Please enter your name: Fred

OK Fred, identify your device

understanding the input-output dialog

the text displayed by the computer is in black the user’s response in red

the user types a response after reading a prompt which is a message the program outputs to request input

a good prompt will give the user a helpful description of what to enter

introducing the code

1 Scanner keyboard = new Scanner(System.in);

2 String name = "";

3 System.out.print("Please enter your name: ");

4 name = keyboard.nextLine();

5 System.out.println("OK " + name + ", identify your device");

understanding the code

on line 1 the code sets up the program to be able to read what the user types, this setup need only happen once at the start of the program

on line 2 the String variable called name is declared, it will be used to store whatever is entered, text is the default data type for entering values

on line 3 a prompt message is displayed on the console to request the user to enter data

on line 4 the program waits for the user to type in some characters and press the enter key, whatever is typed is then stored into the variable called name as a text value

later, on line 5, the program can use the stored value, for example to continue a dialogue with the user