Creating References to Objects

Question

I have this Object here:

public class ItemInfo {

    String productName;
    String rfidTagNumber;
    String originalLocal;
    String currentLocal;
    double productPrice;

    public ItemInfo(String name, String tag, String origLoc, String curLoc, double price) {
        productName = name;
        rfidTagNumber = tag;
        originalLocal = origLoc;
        currentLocal = curLoc;
        productPrice = price;
    }

I need to create and have a reference to an ItemInfo Object in here:

public class ItemInfoNode {

    ItemInfoNode next;
    ItemInfoNode prev;

    public ItemInfoNode(){

    }

    public void setInfo(ItemInfo info) {

    }

    public ItemInfo getInfo(){
        return null;    
    }

    public void setNext(ItemInfoNode node) {

    }

    public void setPrev(ItemInfoNode node) {

    }

    public ItemInfoNode getNext() {
        return null;
    }

    public ItemInfoNode getPrev() {
        return null;
    }
}

I know how to make new objects but I am not quite sure that is correct so I omitted the line, how do I create just a reference?

EDIT: Just another small sidebar, I have two ItemInfoNode objects next and prev as seen above, do I just leave the constructor blank? Is that okay? I pasted the rest of the class to show functions, if that'll help an answer in anyway. Thanks again!

Solution

In Java, the new keyword returns a reference to a newly-constructed object. Therefore, in

String s = new String("foo");

the value of variable s is a reference to a String object. And then, if you were to do something like

String t = s;

then you've set t to the same value as s, which is to say, it's now a reference to the same object.

Comments

[Javier]

Note that this is only an example. In most cases you should avoid using new String.