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Thread: Why use interfaces? I'm not grasping this concept.

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    Default Why use interfaces? I'm not grasping this concept.

    Ok, I'm relatively new to Java. I'm getting a pretty good grasp of most of the foundations, but interfaces just baffle me. If you have to define all the methods later on anyway, what's the point of using the interface?

    I'm sure eventually I would get this after a lot more study, but I'd really like to generally understand the concept.

    It's explained in various teaching materials that if you implement an interface, all the methods must be defined in the class or you will have a compile error. So the one possibility I'm thinking of is this... Is the purpose just to make sure that another coder doesn't forget to utilize a certain method? I'll use a gaming example because eventually that's what I'd like to get into.

    A character in a game HAS TO have a style of walking, a voice, a certain set of weapons, etc etc... so the interface guarantees that another coder working on that character won't forget to code in certain aspects of the character? Maybe I'm way off. Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks!


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    Super Moderator helloworld922's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why use interfaces? I'm not grasping this concept.

    That's the basic idea, though interfaces generally are used to describe how you can interact with a certain object, not necessarily what properties that object has. Sometimes you don't care how the underlying implementation works, just that it does. This is known as abstraction.

    For example, take a Movable interface which contains one method which moves the object to the specified location. From the point of view from a user, it doesn't matter how the actual object gets moved (pushed, pulled, teleported, etc.). The only important feature is that you can move the object that is Movable, and that abstraction is good enough for the user.

    A more concrete example is the event handler dynamics. The Java API has an ActionListener class which specifies that a certain object is capable of receiving and processing ActionEvents. The source of the event (say, clicking a JButton) doesn't care where the event gets passed to. All it needs to know is who to pass event information to, how to pass the information, and what to expect back. This is captured in the ActionPerformed abstract method of the ActionListener interface:

    void ActionPerformed(ActionEvent e);

    The source must pass an ActionEvent object to a destination object via the ActionPerformed method. This method returns nothing.

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    Default Re: Why use interfaces? I'm not grasping this concept.

    A character in a game HAS TO have a style of walking, a voice, a certain set of weapons, etc etc... so the interface guarantees that another coder working on that character won't forget to code in certain aspects of the character?
    I think this is it.

    And it's not just forgetfulness on the part of 2nd-programmer that you want to guard against. You might want to write code that does a die(Character character). It will invoke the walking's stop() method, empty the weapons set, and make the voice utter something dramatic. You can write this code even before 2nd-programmer has implemented the Character interface. That's because the Character definition defines what you expect a character to be able to do and the compiler will enforce this for any programmer who says "import com.coolgame.Character;"

    ---

    This reliance on the compiler to enforce your types into the future and unknown (aka "strong typing") is Java's way of doing it. Other languages - think JavaScript - aren't so compiler reliant. So long as a JS Object instance has a weapons, a voice and walks you could pass it to die().

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    Super Moderator jps's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why use interfaces? I'm not grasping this concept.

    Quote Originally Posted by zeropointfield View Post
    A character in a game HAS TO have a style of walking, a voice, a certain set of weapons, etc etc... so the interface guarantees that another coder working on that character won't forget to code in certain aspects of the character?
    The guarantee is not that the character will have a voice, so to speak. The implementing class could just have an empty bodied method, basically ignoring what you considered an important role for a character. Perhaps a "blob" would have a style of walking and weapons, but no voice after all. The blob would still have to include the voice method, even if it is blank. The guarantee is that if some code asks the blob to speak, the blob can effectively ignore the request without causing the game to crash.

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