Inheritance disadvantage
Unlike method invocation, inheritance violates encapsulation. Since you don't know the super class implementation which may involve some unpredictable calling between different methods of super class. And it is difficult to maintain the subclass when there is a change of the super class.
Be careful with the interaction between inner methods of the superclass. Here is the demo.
package com.effectivejava.classinterface;
import java.util.Collection;
import java.util.Set;
/**
* @author Kaibo
*
*/
// Wrapper class - uses composition in place of inheritance
public class InstrumentedSet<E> extends ForwardingSet<E> {
private int addCount = 0;
public InstrumentedSet(Set<E> s) {
super(s);
}
@Override
public boolean add(E e) {
addCount++;
return super.add(e);
}
@Override
public boolean addAll(Collection<? extends E> c) {
addCount += c.size();
return super.addAll(c);
}
public int getAddCount() {
/* If you directly extends one implementation such as HashSet<E> of the Set<E> interface you will get the wrong addCount since the addAll method invoke the add method internally which has been override by your sub class.
*/
return addCount;
}
}
/**
* Implementation of prefer to composite to inherence.
*/
package com.effectivejava.classinterface;
import java.util.Collection;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.Set;
/**
* @author Kaibo
*
*/
// Reusable forwarding class
public class ForwardingSet<E> implements Set<E> {
private final Set<E> s;
public ForwardingSet(Set<E> s) {
this.s = s;
}
public void clear() {
s.clear();
}
public boolean contains(Object o) {
return s.contains(o);
}
public boolean isEmpty() {
return s.isEmpty();
}
public int size() {
return s.size();
}
public Iterator<E> iterator() {
return s.iterator();
}
public boolean add(E e) {
return s.add(e);
}
public boolean remove(Object o) {
return s.remove(o);
}
public boolean containsAll(Collection<?> c) {
return s.containsAll(c);
}
public boolean addAll(Collection<? extends E> c) {
return s.addAll(c);
}
public boolean removeAll(Collection<?> c) {
return s.removeAll(c);
}
public boolean retainAll(Collection<?> c) {
return s.retainAll(c);
}
public Object[] toArray() {
return s.toArray();
}
public <T> T[] toArray(T[] a) {
return s.toArray(a);
}
@Override
public boolean equals(Object o) {
return s.equals(o);
}
@Override
public int hashCode() {
return s.hashCode();
}
@Override
public String toString() {
return s.toString();
}
}
Wrapper class (Composite) disadvantage
Wrapper classes are not suited for use in callback frameworks, wherein objects pass self-references to other objects for subsequent invocations ("callbacks").
To avoid the method invoke subclass's overrided version
You can eliminate a class's self-use of overridable methods mechanically, without changing its behavior. Move the body of each overridable method to a private "helper method" and have each overridable method invoke its private helper method. Then replace each self-use of an overridable method with a direct invocation of the overridable method's private helper method.