Question

classes:

public abstract class BaseHolidayPackageVariant {
    private Integer variantId;
    private HolidayPackage holidayPackage;
    private String holidayPackageType;
}

public class LandHolidayPackageVariant extends BaseHolidayPackageVariant{

}

public class FlightHolidayPackageVariant extends BaseHolidayPackageVariant{
    private Destination originCity;
}

public class HolidayPackage{
    ArrayList<BaseHolidayPackageVariant> variants;

    BaseHolidayPackageVariant defaultVariant;
}

At runtime, how can I know if a given Object in variants[] is of Type LandPackageVariant or FlightPackageVariant without doing something of the sorts of:

if(holidayPackageType.equals("LandHolidayPackageVariant")
 obj = (LandHolidayPackageVariant)variant[i];
else if(holidayPackageType.equals("FlightHolidayPackageVariant")
 obj = (FlightHolidayPackageVariant)variant[i];

This question stems from a design question I asked here

Answer 1

In a good object-oriented design, you shouldn’t ever need to know if the object is of a particular type. You just call methods on it, and the object does the right thing.

For example, FlightHolidayPackageVariant has a field originCity that isn’t in the other HolidayPackageVariant classes, and you want to render that in the UI. The object-oriented way to solve this is to make the HolidayPackageVariant responsible, in some way, for controlling its own rendering. Let’s say your UI is going to show a list of properties for each variant. You can let the variants supply those lists:

public abstract class BaseHolidayPackageVariant {
    private int cost;

    public Map<String, String> getDetails() {
        HashMap<String, String> details = new HashMap<String, String>();
        details.put("cost", String.format("%.2f", cost / 100.0));
        return details;
    }
}

public class FlightHolidayPackageVariant extends BaseHolidayPackageVariant {
    private Destination originCity;

    @Override
    public Map<String, String> getDetails() {
        Map<String, String> details = super.getDetails();
        details.put("origin city", originCity.getName());
        return details;
    }
}

Now, your UI code can simply ask each variant object for its details, without having to know what kind of variant it is.