Assign the return value to the new variable (Java)

It's been a while since I did some java coding

I need to build an application for the business that needs to be automated (part of the workshop), but this has nothing to do with my problem

I'm stuck online: customerlist Add (customer)// (part of the addcustomer method in the wcia class) this is also the first time I was told to "assign the return value to the new variable" as part of the error, so I'm not sure what this means

Code: Main

import java.util.ArrayList;


public class WCIA {

    private final ArrayList customerList = null;

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        short s =002;


        Customer arno = new Customer();
        arno.setName("Arno");
        arno.setId(s);
        arno.setEmail("arnomeye@gmail.com");
        arno.setAddress("Somewhere");
        arno.setPhoneNum("0727855201");
         System.out.printf("%s",arno.getEmail());
     WCIA wcia = new WCIA();

     wcia.addCustomer(arno);
     wcia.displayCustomers();
    }

    public void addCustomer (Customer customer)
    {
        customerList.add(customer); // <---Problem over here
    }
    public void displayCustomers()
    {
        for(int x=0;x<customerList.size();x++)
        {
            Customer cus = (Customer) customerList.get(x);
            cus.DisplayCustomer();
        }
    }
}

Code: customer class:

public class Customer {

   private short id;
   private String name;
   private String email;
   private String phoneNum;
   private String address;

  public Customer()
  {

    System.out.println("Class initiated");
  }




    public void DisplayCustomer()
    {
        System.out.append("Name : "+ name+"\n");
        System.out.append("ID : "+ id+"\n");
        System.out.append("Email : "+ email+"\n");
        System.out.append("Phone Number : "+ phoneNum+"\n");
        System.out.append("address : "+ address+"\n");
    }

    public void setId(short id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public void setEmail(String email) {
        this.email = email;
    }

    public void setPhoneNum(String phoneNum) {
        this.phoneNum = phoneNum;
    }

    public void setAddress(String address) {
        this.address = address;
    }

    public short getId() {
        return id;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public String getEmail() {
        return email;
    }

    public String getPhoneNum() {
        return phoneNum;
    }

    public String getAddress() {
        return address;
    }

}

Solution

You need to instantiate ArrayList before you can assign elements to it You may be getting NullPointerException, which is my guess

Change this line:

private final ArrayList customerList = null;

to

private final ArrayList customerList = new ArrayList();

At least this problem should be solved I didn't read the rest of your code, so I'm not sure if there are other problems