control p5 slider.setRange() not found in subclass

Question

Im trying to set the Range of a slider within a subclass, catching the respective controller using getController, which works fine, proven by the returned value i get within the print. But controller.setRange() doesnt get recognized as a function.

can the range only be initialized during the creation of the object or does getController return a different object than i expect it does?

thanks!

  class Stepper
  {
String stepperName = "default";
int ID = motorID;
int stepperValue;

Stepper(String givenName) {
  stepperName = givenName;
  cp5.addSlider(stepperName)
    .setPosition(sliderPosX+(sliderWidth+100)*surgeonBotID, sliderPosY+90*servoList.length+30*(motorID-servoList.length))
      .setSize(sliderWidth, int(sliderHeight*0.5))
        //.setRange(0, 179)
          .setSliderMode(Slider.FLEXIBLE);

  println("Created new Stepper: "+stepperName+ " ID: "+ID);
  motorID++;
}

void setRange(float min, float max){
       println("object: "+cp5.getController(getStepperName()).getValue()); 
       cp5.getController(getStepperName()).setRange(min, max);
}
...
  }

Answer 1

Questions like these are best answered by consulting the API.

The getController() method returns a Controller. The Controller class does not have a setRange() function. That instance happens to be an instance of Slider, which is a subclass of Controller, but the compiler has no way of knowing that. That's what's causing your error.

You can tell the compiler that the instance is indeed a Slider by casting the returned value to a Slider, and then you can access the methods defined by the Slider class:

((Slider)cp5.getController(getStepperName())).setRange(min, max);

To make that easier to understand, here it is split up into two lines:

Slider s = (Slider)cp5.getController(getStepperName());
s.setRange(min, max);