What is wrong with my Code in relation to creating a constructor?

Question

I am trying to create a Person class, with a constructor that initiates the instance variables with the given parameters, but when a new person object is created through mai

Answer 1

Remove void from your constructor.

Answer 2

Change your code to be this:

public class Person {
    private String fName;
    private String mName;
    private String lName;
    private String dob;

    public Person(String first, String middle, String last, String dateOfBirth){

        fName = first;
        mName = middle;
        lName = last;
        dob = dateOfBirth;
    }

    public String getFirstName(){
        return fName;
    }

    public String getMiddleName(){
        return mName;
    }

    public String getLastName(){
        return lName;
    }

    public String getDOB(){
        return dob;
    }

    public void getFullName(){
        System.out.println(fName + " " + mName + " " + lName);

    }

    public void setFirstName(String name){
        fName = name;
    }

    public void setMiddleName(String name){
        mName = name;
    }

    public void setLastName(String name){
        lName = name;
    }

    public void setDOB(String date){
        dob = date;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Person p1 = new Person("John","Thomas","Smith", "10 Jul 14");
        p1.getFullName();
    }
}

Explanation:

Constructors don't have a return type. The "return type" for a constructor is a new instance of the class, and that doesn't have to be defined.

When you define a return type on a constructor you make it into a method. If there are no other constructors, Java will use a default zero-argument constructor. That is why you get the error.

Answer 3

This is not a constructor; because of void, it's a method.

public void Person(String first, String middle, String last, String dateOfBirth){

There was no explicit constructor, so the Java compiler created a default, no-arg constructor. That explains the part of the error message that states:

required: no arguments

Remove the void to turn it into a constructor.

public Person(String first, String middle, String last, String dateOfBirth){