Getting Index of an item in an arraylist;

Question

I have a Class called AuctionItem. The AuctionItem Class has a method called getName() that returns a String. If I have an ArrayList of type AuctionItem, what is the best way to return the index of an item in the ArrayList that has a specific name?

I know that there is an .indexOf() function. The parameter for this function is an object. To find the item that has a name, should I just use a for loop, and when the item is found, return the element position in the ArrayList?

Is there a better way?

Answer 1

I think a for-loop should be a valid solution :

    public int getIndexByname(String pName)
    {
        for(AuctionItem _item : *yourArray*)
        {
            if(_item.getName().equals(pName))
                return *yourarray*.indexOf(_item)
        }
        return -1;
    }