HashMap help? Values keep overriding..?

[sim18]

I create a new hashMap : private HashMap<String, LibraryItem> itemsMap;
This is to store a string and then a LibraryItem object.

Constructor: itemsMap = new HashMap<String, LibraryItem>();

public void storeLibraryItem(LibraryItem li)
{
itemsMap.put(new String ("Item"), li);
}

It compiles fine, but each of my LibraryItem li objects keep overriding each other until the last one.

I don't really want to keep adding new .put each time for eg:

itemsMap.put(new String ("Item"), li);
itemsMap.put(new String ("Item"), li);
itemsMap.put(new String ("Item"), li);

(For each different object because the storeLibraryItem method gets called when I read a file)

Thanks very much!

[Fubarable]

This is equivalent to your writing an English-Spanish dictionary that looks like this:

hello -- hola
hello -- adiós
hello -- gracias
hello -- de nada
hello -- hoy
...

That wouldn't be a very useful dictionary, and no Spanish speaker would be able to use to help them translate an article in English.

It's the same for a HashMap -- each key *must* be unique, else it doesn't function. So do that, make each key unique and meaningful, else simply use an ArrayList.

[Norm]

objects keep overriding each other until the last one.

Another way to look at it. What if you are assigning values to a variable:
var = val1;
var = var2;
var = val3;

Here the values are overriding the previous ones until the last one.

If you test what is returned by the put() method you will see if you are replacing an existing value. See the API doc.