Question

I have following class diagram (visitor pattern implementation):

Expected result:
1) WiredVisitor should visit only Router and WiredNetworkCard
2) WirelessVisitor should visit only Router and WirelessNetworkCard

So, my question is: How should I change design (or code) for achieving my expected result?

P.S. My current solution is to add following piece of code to each visit(card:INetworkCard) method in both visitors:

// in WiredVisitor
if (card.getClass.equals(WiredNetworkCard.class)){
    // do logic of visit method
}

// in WirelessVisitor
if (card.getClass.equals(WirelessNetworkCard.class)){
    // do logic of visit method
}

Answer 1

In the spirit of the acyclic visitor pattern, separate your visitors into subclass specific ones. Note that you’ll still need the type check, but it’s contained to the type being visited:

Here are the visitor interfaces:

interface IVisitor {
}

interface IRouterVisitor extends IVisitor {
  void visit(Router router);
}

interface INetworkCardVisitor extends IVisitor {
}

interface IWirelessNetworkCardVisitor extends INetworkCardVisitor {
  void visit(WirelessNetworkCard card);
}

interface IWiredNetworkCardVisitor extends INetworkCardVisitor {
  void visit(WiredNetworkCard card);
}

The concrete visitors will look like this:

class WiredVisitor implements IWiredNetworkCardVisitor, IRouterVisitor  {
  // ...
}

class WirelessVisitor implements IWirelessNetworkCardVisitor, IRouterVisitor {
  // ...
}

And the visited objects:

interface INetworkElement {
  void accept(IVisitor visitor);
}

class Router implements INetworkElement {
  @Override
  public void accept(IVisitor visitor) {
    if (visitor instanceof IRouterVisitor) {
      ((IRouterVisitor)visitor).visit(this);
    }
  }
}

interface INetworkCard extends INetworkElement {}

class WiredNetworkCard implements INetworkCard {
  @Override
  public void accept(IVisitor visitor) {
    if (visitor instanceof IWiredNetworkCardVisitor) {
      ((IWiredNetworkCardVisitor)visitor).visit(this);
    }
  }
}

class WirelessNetworkCard implements INetworkCard {
  @Override
  public void accept(IVisitor visitor) {
    if (visitor instanceof IWirelessNetworkCardVisitor) {
      ((IWirelessNetworkCardVisitor)visitor).visit(this);
    }
  }
}

In those type checks, you can also throw an error if the type is not the expected one, depending on what you’d like to happen in that case.