Question

I have the following classes

class Person {
    private String name;
    void getName(){...}}

class Student extends Person{
    String class;
    void getClass(){...}
}

class Teacher extends Person{
    String experience;
    void getExperience(){...}
}

This is just a simplified version of my actual schema. Initially I don’t know the type of person that needs to be created, so the function that handles the creation of these objects takes the general Person object as a parameter.

void calculate(Person p){...}

Now I want to access the methods of the child classes using this parent class object. I also need to access parent class methods from time to time so I CANNOT MAKE IT ABSTRACT.

---

I guess I simplified too much in the above example, so here goes , this is the actual structure.

class Question {
  // private attributes
  :
  private QuestionOption option;
  // getters and setters for private attributes
  :
  public QuestionOption getOption(){...}
 }

 class QuestionOption{
 ....
 }
 class ChoiceQuestionOption extends QuestionOption{
 private boolean allowMultiple;
 public boolean getMultiple(){...}
 }

 class Survey{
  void renderSurvey(Question q) {
      /*
          Depending on the type of question (choice, dropdwn or other, I have to render
          the question on the UI. The class that calls this doesnt have compile time 
          knowledge of the type of question that is going to be rendered. Each question 
          type has its own rendering function. If this is for choice , I need to access 
          its functions using q. 
      */
      if(q.getOption().getMultiple())
        {...}
  }
 }

The if statement says “cannot find getMultiple for QuestionOption.” OuestionOption has many more child classes that have different types of methods that are not common among the children (getMultiple is not common among the children)

Answer 1

NOTE: Though this is possible, it is not at all recommended as it kind of destroys the reason for inheritance. The best way would be to restructure your application design so that there are NO parent to child dependencies. A parent should not ever need to know its children or their capabilities.

However.. you should be able to do it like:

void calculate(Person p) {
    ((Student)p).method();
}

a safe way would be:

void calculate(Person p) {
    if(p instanceof Student) ((Student)p).method();
}