Question

I have a class ImageA, and a class ImageB. The both classes represents an image in my app, but each one in a different way. Even being different, their constructors are equal, and both have the method compare.

So, what I done was creating a class Image, and ImageA and ImageB are subClasses of Image.

public abstract class Image {
    protected String path;

    public Image(String path){
        this.path = path;
    }

    public abstract double compare(Image i2);
}


public class ImageA extends Image{...} 

public class ImageB extends Image{...}

But what I need is to test each implementation of image (ImageA and ImageB, in this case), to see the best one.

Is there a way to do this, changing my code at minimum? Suppose the objects used are from ImageA class, and I want to test now imageB class;

Obs.:

• If all imageA objects of my app are
  setted by the type (ImageA i = new
  ImageA()), I’d have to change
  manually all in the code.

• But even if I use the superType and
  cast it (Image i = (ImageA)new
  Image()), I’ll have the same problem,
  to change the casts.

• My question is different from this one: Refactoring abstract Java class with many child classes . In my case, the attributes inside the child classes are different, and I keep the attributes common to these classes in the Image class.

Answer 1

You could create a factory and pass an instance of your factory into the test class, using:

Image img = factory.newInstance(args);

throughout your test code. The factory determines which of the types ImageA or ImageB is used. An alternative would be to have a abstract Image newInstance(args) in your Image class and implement it in your subclasses. You would inject a first image instance into your test classes in that case.

Both methods rely on the fact that your args are the same between both types of images, you might need to pass in a superset to fulfill both constructors.