Question

I have been trying to figure out a way to tag several methods from my base class, so that a client class can call them by tag. The example code is:

public class Base {
         public void method1(){     
        ..change state of base class
    }

    public void method2(){      
        ..change state of base class
    }

    public void method3(){      
        ..change state of base class
    }
}

A client class from a main() method will call each method of Base through a random instruction sequence:

public static void main(String[] args) {
String sequence = "ABCAABBBABACCACC"
Base aBase = new Base();
for (int i = 0; i < sequence.length(); i++){
            char temp = sequence.charAt(i);
            switch(temp){
            case 'A':{aBase.method1(); break;}
            case 'B':{aBase.method2(); break;}
            case 'C':{aBase.method3(); break;}          }
        }

        System.out.println(aBase.getState());

    }

Now I wish to get rid of the switch statement altogether from the Client object. I am aware of the technique to replace switch by polymorphism, but would like to avoid creating a set of new classes. I was hoping to simply store those methods in an appropriate data structure and somehow tag them with a matching character from the sequence.

A map could easily store objects with value/key pairs which could do the job, (as I did here), or the command pattern, but since I don’t want to replace those methods with objects, is there a different way perhaps, to store methods and have a client selectively call them?

Any advice is appreciated

Answer 1

Something like this?

public class Base {

    private final Map<Character, Method> methods = new HashMap<Character, Method>();

    public Base() throws SecurityException, NoSuchMethodException {
        methods.put('A', getClass().getMethod("method1"));
        methods.put('B', getClass().getMethod("method2"));
        methods.put('C', getClass().getMethod("method3"));
    }

    public Method getMethod(char c) {
        return methods.get(c);
    }

    public void method1() {}

    public void method2() {}

    public void method3() {}

}

and then

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        String sequence = "ABCAABBBABACCACC";
        Base aBase = new Base();

        for (int i = 0; i < sequence.length(); i++) {
            char temp = sequence.charAt(i);
            aBase.getMethod(temp).invoke(aBase);
        }
    }