Question

I have following functional hierarchy which I’m recreating in Java:

   Diagram
     |
     |--Model
          |
          |--Entity

All those object share some common properties (id, name) and also an reference to parent object in hierarchy. So I have implemented an abstract class:

abstract class DBObject{
   private final int id;
   private final String name;
   private final DBObject parent;

   //constructors, getters, setters here

   /**
    * @return reference to parent object in hierarchy.
    */
    public final getParent(){
       return parent;
    }
}

So far no problem. The thing is, that Diagram has no parent and will always return null. This is ensured by implementation. But I would like to reflect the “parent always null” in Diagram Javadoc.
Is it possible to overload Javadoc, without overriding method? Solution would be to state that in abstract class as a note, but that’s no an answer I’m looking for.

Thanks.

Answer 1

How about this?

/**
* @return reference to parent object in hierarchy. may be null.
*/
@Nullable
public final DBObject getParent(){
   return parent;
}