ArrayList: Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException

[susan]

Having a problem creating objects and storing them in an arraylist. I have no problem doing this with regular arrays, but whenever I try to use an arraylist I get the error:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
at ZBay.printItems(main.java:41)
at main.processCommands(main.java:17)
at main.main(main.java:10)

import java.util.*;

public class main
{
	public static void main(String[] parms)
	{
		ZBay store;

		store = new ZBay();
		processCommands(store);

		System.out.println("\nProgram completed normally.");
	}

	public static void processCommands(ZBay store)
	{
		store.printItems();
	}
}

class ZBay
{
	ArrayList itemList;

	public ZBay()
	{
		createItemList();
	}

	public void createItemList()
	{
		ArrayList itemList = new ArrayList();

		itemList.add(new Item("test", "test", "test", "test"));
	}

	public void printItems()
	{
		Item currentItem;

		currentItem = (Item) itemList.get(0);

		System.out.println(currentItem.toString());
	}
}

class Item
{
	String itemId;
	String itemName;
	String itemPrice;
	String vendorId;
	String purchaserId;

	public Item(String itemId, String itemName, String itemPrice, String vendorId)
	{
		this.itemId = itemId;
		this.itemId = itemName;
		this.itemPrice = itemPrice;
		this.vendorId = vendorId;
	}

		public String toString()
		{
			return itemId + " " + itemName + " " + itemPrice + " " + vendorId;
		}
}

Any help just pointing out where I am going wrong would be great!

Thanks.

[akaruppa]

Hi,
I think the problem is in
public void createItemList()

In this method, you are defining a local variable
ArrayList itemList = new ArrayList();

Hence the member variable itemList is still empty..