How do I easily and neatly print multiple objects using a toString method, that are also aligned?

malthe.w :

I've got an ArrayList of members, each with their own information including name, age, date of birth etc., which is called with a toString method when printed out to the terminal.

Here's the code:

@Override
    public String toString() {
        return "|ID: " + id + "| Name: " + name + "| Age: " + 
              calculateAge(age, LocalDate.now()) + "| Tlf.: " + tlfNo + "| Active: " + 
              activeMember + "| Next payment: " + nextPayment + "|";
    }

And here's the output:

|ID: 12| Name: Casper| Age: 49| Tlf.: 12345678| Active: true| Next payment: 2018-02-12|
|ID: 13| Name: Allan| Age: 69| Tlf.: 12345678| Active: true| Next payment: 2018-01-12|
|ID: 16| Name: Christina| Age: 100| Tlf.: 12345678| Active: false| Next payment: 2018-02-04|
|ID: 19| Name: RICK| Age: 49| Tlf.: 12345678| Active: false| Next payment: 2018-04-14|

How do I get the different pieces of information to align on top of each other?

Veselin Davidov :

You can do something like:

 public String toString() {
        return String.format("|id: %10d |Name: %30s| Age: %02d | Tlf.: %d| Active: %s| Next Payment: %s |", id, getNameTrimmed() , age , tlfNo ,    activeMember, nextPayment );
 }

 private  String getNameTrimmed(){
    if(name.length()>30) {
        return name.substring(0,27)+"...";
    }
    return name;
}

This way the id will have 10 characters (it will still break the format if you have longer IDs) The name will have 30 so you need to add a method to give you 30 chars name

How do I easily and neatly print multiple objects using a toString method, that are also aligned?

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