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Student Class

The Student class represents a student user within the School Enrollment System.
It extends the generic User<Student> class and adds academic‑specific attributes and behaviors such as course enrollment, grade viewing, and credit limit management.

Purpose

The purpose of the Student class is to:

  • Model a student in the system
  • Manage course enrollment and dropping
  • Track credit limits and enrolled hours
  • Provide access to grades and assessments
  • Allow students to update their personal information
  • Support authentication through the inherited login system

The class simulates the core functionality of a student portal in a university environment.

Structure and key components

1. Inheritance

The class is defined as:

public class Student extends User<Student>

This allows the student to inherit:

  • ID, name, password, email, phone number, address
  • Role handling
  • Abstract login and logout methods

The student class then implements its own role‑specific logic.

2. Attributes

The Student class introduces two additional fields:

  • creditLimit
    The maximum number of credit hours the student is allowed to enroll in.

  • enrolledCourses
    A list of Course objects representing the courses the student is currently enrolled in.

The list is initialized in the constructor to avoid NullPointerException.

3. Constructors

Default constructor

Creates an empty student object, typically used during file loading or temporary object creation.

Parameterized constructor

Initializes:

  • All inherited user fields (via super)
  • The student's credit limit
  • The list of enrolled courses (or creates a new list if none is provided)

This ensures that every student object is fully initialized.

4. Methods

The Student class implements several categories of methods.

Authentication

login

Searches the list of students for a matching ID and password.

Behavior:

  • Iterates through the student list
  • Compares credentials
  • Prints success or failure messages
  • Returns the authenticated student or null

logout

Returns a simple confirmation message indicating that the student has logged out.

Enrollment management

totalCreditLimit

Calculates the total number of credit hours the student is currently enrolled in.

enroll_In_Course

Attempts to enroll the student in a course.

Enrollment is allowed only if:

  • The student is not already enrolled
  • The course is not full
  • Enrollment is open
  • The student has enough remaining credit hours

If successful:

  • The course is added to the student's enrolledCourses
  • The student is added to the course's enrolledStudents

dropCourse

Allows the student to drop a course.

Dropping is only allowed if:

  • The student is enrolled in the course
  • The course is still open for enrollment

This prevents dropping after the course has been closed.

Credit management

viewCreditLimit

Displays:

  • The student's total credit limit
  • The number of credit hours currently enrolled
  • The remaining available credit hours

enrolledInHours

Calculates the total number of credit hours across all enrolled courses.

Grades management

viewGrades

Provides a menu‑driven interface for viewing grades.

Students can:

  • View specific exam scores
  • View all grades for a course
  • View average grades for a course

This method uses a temporary Assessment object to access grade‑related functionality.

Course exploration

viewEnrolledCourses

Displays all courses the student is currently enrolled in, including:

  • Course name
  • Course code
  • Credit hours
  • Schedule

viewAvailableCourses

Lists all courses that are:

  • Open
  • Not full
  • Not already enrolled by the student

This helps students explore enrollment options.

Personal information management

updateStudentPersonalInfo

Allows the student to update:

  • Password
  • Email
  • Phone number
  • Address

Validation is handled through the Helpers class.

Utility

toString

Overrides toString() to return a concise representation of the student:

  • ID
  • Name

This is useful for administrative listings and debugging.

Summary

The Student class models the academic and personal responsibilities of a student within the system.
By extending the User class and adding enrollment, grade, and credit management features, it provides a complete and realistic representation of student functionality in a course enrollment environment.