Consider this situation: I’ve got an aquarium simulator where I have 5 different types of fishes. Different types means different attributes (speed, colour, hunger, etc). What if I want the user of my simulator to be able to create a new type of fish and give it its values for its attributes?
How is that implemented by the programmer? Do I need some kind of “event handling” that will add a specific bunch of lines of code in my “Fish” class? Is that even a valid thought?
(In case it’s essential, the language is Java. And to avoid any misunderstandings and prevent comments like “is this uni work?”, yes it is. But I am not looking for THE answer, I am curious about the concept.)
EDIT: Yeah, my bad that I didn’t mention the interaction way: a GUI.
So, imagine a tab called “Add New Species” that has a field for every attribute of the fishes (type, speed, colour, etc). So, the user fills in the fields with the appropriate values and when he clicks on “add” the constructor is called. At least that’s how I imagine it. 🙂
Have a look at the type object pattern. Also google for it I just gave one of the first references I found…
You may also look the Reflection pattern…