Question

I have an interesting situation that EMF forced me into:

abstract class AbstractDog{
   ...
}

public class Dog extends AbstractDog{
   < implemented code >
}

public class DogTemplate extends AbstractDog{
   < implemented code identical to Dog >
}

The code found in both Dog and DogTemplate are literally identical (don’t ask – our system is very reliant on Eclipse stuff and this is the only way). I need to cast from a DogTemplate into a Dog, but getting java.lang.ClassCastException when I do Dog d = (Dog) dogTemplateInstance. I completely understand why this exception is occurring, so please don’t bother telling me why.

What I need to know is if there is any way to leverage the common ancestor relationship between the 2 classes to make this cast happen?

Answer 1

There is no way a DogTemplate can be cast to a Dog, since Dog doesn’t even extend DogTemplate. Only a Dog instance can be cast to a Dog.

You could create a new Dog instance using a constructor which would copy all the fields of DogTemplate to Dog, if it’s possible. Or you could use a common interface to both classes.