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<< Mixin Composition | Contents | Dependent Types >>

Virtual Classes

Overridable Classes

Caesar classes as well as plain Java classes can contain inner classes. The difference is that Caesar considers all inner classes as virtual classes, which can be overridden in the subclasses of the enclosing class. What does it mean and why would we need that?

Let’s consider a possible implementation of a Button class. It defines inner classes FlatBorder and PushedBorder to implement different border drawing for different button states and inner class Border as their common abstraction:
 
class Button {
   private Border _border;
   /* ... */

   public void push() {
      setBorder(new PushedBorder());
   }
   public void release() {
      setBorder(new FlatBorder());
   }

   public void display(Graphics g) {
      g.drawText(posX, posY, buttonText);
      _border.display(g);
   }
      
   class Border {
      public abstract void display(g); 
      public Color getBaseColor() { 
         /* retrieve system color for buttons */
	}
   }

   class FlatBorder extends Border {
       public void display(Graphics g) {
          /* draw raised border */
       }
   }

   class PushedBorder extends Border {
      public void display(Graphics g) {
          /* draw pushed border */
       }
   }
}

Let’s say I want to reuse this class in my application, but I want to display PushedBorder in a different way. I can define a new version of PushedButton in my subclass of Button:
 
class MyButton extends Button {
   class PushedBorder extends Border {
      public void display(Graphics g) {
         /* draw pushed border in my way */
      }
   }
}

Such solution won’t work in Java, because the new PushedBorder? class version won’t be used by the methods of Button. Therefore I also have to override push() and all other methods where PushedBorder is instantiated. Basically if I don’t want to have problems we will have to define factory methods and use them single points for instantiation inner classes.

Now let’s imagine I need to provide possibility to customize user interface colors in my application. Border.getBaseColor() should return a color from application settings rather than from the system. I would like to redefine the Border class with the new functionality:
 
class MyButton extends Button {
   class Border {
      public Color getBaseColor() { 
         /* retrieve border color from application settings */
	}
   }
}

However, we already know that this won’t work in Java and there is no quick work around. I have to reimplement both FlatBorder and PushedBorder so that they now inherit from the new Border class and then override all methods, which instantiate these classes. Another alternative is directly changing Border class in the Button, so that it supports my application requirements, but directly changing reusable classes is not a very good idea.

As we can see we already run into extensibility problems with such relatively simple example. Imagine that you want to adapt to your needs a large object-oriented framework with rich inheritance hierarchies without changing it. You will definitely have much more severe extensibility problems.

This problem does not exist in Caesar. The both examples above will work in Caesar (with keyword class replaced to cclass), because all inner Caesar classes are considered as virtual classes and can be overridden. The overridden class is automatically used in all places where its old version was used. That means that push() of MyButton will instantiate PushedBorder of MyButton and PushedBorder of MyButton will inherit from Border of MyButton.

Those, who are curious how a class can be replaced in inheritance relationships, should remember the previous chapter about mixins. As we already know, all class declarations can be considered as mixins – classes with parameterizable superclass. In this way the classes Button.FlatBorder and Button.PushedBorder are also considered as mixins, which can be combined with any subtype of Button.Border. On the other hand all overridden classes are considered as subtypes of their older versions, so MyButton.Border is a subtype of Button.Border and, therefore, can replace Button.Border in its subclasses.

Features of Virtual Classes

Let's look to another example to study the possibilities of virtual classes. We will use virtual classes to extend a collaboration with a totally new funtionality. Let’s say we have a core data model to represent expressions:
 
public cclass ExprModel {
   abstract public cclass Expr {       
   }

   public cclass Constant extends Expr {
      protected int _val;
      public Constant(int val) { 
         _val = val;
      }             
   }
   
   abstract public cclass BinaryExpr {
      protected Expr _left;
      protected Expr _right;
      public BinaryExpr(Expr left, Expr right) {
         _left = left;
         _right = right;
      } 
   }
   
   public cclass Add extends BinaryExpr {
   }
   
   public cclass Mult extends BinaryExpr {
   }
}

The collaboration defines Expr as the base class for all expressions, concrete classes to represent constants, addition and multiplication. Class BinaryExpr implements the common functionality of all expressions with two operands. Note that the current version of Caesar does not support constructors with parameters and abstract methods in cclass. The code below demonstrates how sample expressions can be built using such collaboration:
 
public model.Expr buildSampleExpr(final ExprModel model) {
   model.Expr const1 = model.new Constant(-3);
   model.Expr const2 = model.new Constant(2);
   model.Expr op1 = model.new Mult(const1, const2);
   model.Expr const3 = model.new Constant(5);
   model.Expr op2 = model.new Add(op1, const3);
   return op2;
}

The collaboration defines Expr as the base class for all expressions, concrete classes to represent constants, addition and multiplication. Class BinaryExpr implements the common functionality of all expressions with two operands.

There are a lot of different functionality related with expressions: their evaluation, formatting expressions to simple text in infix or postfix order, various consistency checks, lookups and transformations. We want to keep all this specific functionality separated from each other and from the core data model. This can be achieved with the help of virtual classes. For example, the collaboration below extends the core model with simple expression formatting functionality:
 
public cclass ExprFormat extends ExprModel {
   abstract public cclass Expr {       
      abstract public void String format();
   }

   public cclass Constant {
      public void String format() { 
         return _val < 0 ? “(“ + _val + “)” : “” + _val; 
      }
   }
   
   abstract public cclass BinaryExpr {
      public void String format() { 
         return “(” + _left.format() + getOperSymbol() 
                    + _right.format() + “)”; 
      }
      abstract public void String getOperSymbol();
   }
   
   public cclass Add {
      public void String getOperSymbol() { return “+”; }
   }
   
   public cclass Mult {
      public void String getOperSymbol() { return “*”; }
   }
}

This short example demonstrates various features of virtual classes:

  • There is no need to repeat inheritance relationships between virtual classes if they are already defined in the supercollaboration. For example ExprModel defines Constant as subclass of Expr. It means that Constant is implicitly assumed as subclass of Expr in ExprFormat as well.

  • Virtual classes can use the fields and methods defined in their older versions. For example ExprFormat.BinaryExpr can use fields _left and _right defined in ExprModel.BinaryExpr.

  • The functionality defined in the overridden virtual classes can be accessed without type casts. For example, fields _left and _right of BinaryExpr were initially declared with type Expr of ExprModel, which does not have method format(), but in the context of ExprFormat the new version of Expr is assumed as the type of _left and _right. So format() can be called without any type casts.

  • The methods introduced in the overridden virtual classes can be again overridden in the new versions of subclasses. For example overridden Expr introduces method format(), which can be overridden in BinaryExpr. While Add and Mult do not override this method further, they inherit the format() of BinaryExpr.

Besides the demonstrated properties, the overridden virtual classes can also
  • introduce new data fields,
  • implement new interfaces,
  • introduce new inheritance relationships.

<< Mixin Composition | Contents | Dependent Types >>