purpose of using the interface as a reference

[Christian Nash]

Hi all,

i really don't understand the concept of using an interface reference object.

for eg.
class A implements B{....}

interface B{}..

B interB = new A();

What does this mean? please explain the concept and the advantages behind this

[fred rosenberger]

Using an interface as the reference is actually a wonderful thing. To borrow from the Head First series, say you have a Pizza interface. i can use that reference to point to ANY kind of pizza - a NewYorkStylePizza, a ChicagoStylePizza, or even an EskimoPizza.

it doesn't matter WHAT the underlying object ACTUALLY is, i just know it is an object that is garanteed to do what a pizza does.

another example you may be familiar with is the iterator interface. i may have several different kinds of collections (sets, hashmpaps, etc). I may want to iterate over all of them. since all of them have a method that returns some kind of object that implements the iterator interface, i don't have to write special code like this:

if (collection is a set)
   get a set iterator
   loop using set iterator methods
else if (collection is a hashmap)
   get a hashmap iterator
   loop using hashmap iterator methods
else if (collection is...
...

all i have to do is:

for each collection i have
  get its iterator
  loop using standard iterator methods

[marc weber]

Among other things, this helps separate things that change from things that don't change, making the code easier to maintain and less prone to breaking.

For example, you might have a method that takes a Pizza reference. As fred pointed out, this will accept any type of Pizza, so you only need one method. But this is also code that doesn't change, so you can continue to invent new types of pizzas (things that might change), and you won't need to update the method.

For this to work, note that the interface is a type of "contract" that guarantees implementing classes will have certain methods available. For example, whenever you create a new class that implements Pizza, instances of that new class are guaranteed to behave like any other Pizza, exactly as expected by a method that takes a Pizza reference.
[ November 27, 2006: Message edited by: marc weber ]

[Justin Fox]

Like in my server/client game we are doing, the ChatIF mediates between
the server and client so that different messages in the ChatClient can be interpreted from the server, and it can use the chatIF to change stuff about the ClientUI without the server doing it directly...


Justin