Question

I wanted to implement a method in a abstract class that is called by the inherited classes and uses their values.

For instance:

abstract class MyClass{
    String value = "myClass";
    void foo(){System.out.println(this.value);}
}

public class childClass{
    String value="childClass";
    void foo(){super.foo();}
}

public static void main(String[] args){
    new childClass.foo();
}

This will output “myClass” but what I really want is to output “childClass”. This is so I can implement a “general” method in a class that when extended by other classes it will use the values from those classes.

I could pass the values as function arguments but I wanted to know if it would be possible to implement the “architecture” I’ve described.

A super method called by the inherited class which uses the values from the caller not itself, this without passing the values by arguments.

Answer 1

You could do something like this:

abstract class MyClass {

    protected String myValue() {
        return "MyClass";
    }

    final void foo() {
        System.out.println(myValue());
    }
}

public class ChildClass extends MyClass {
    @Override
    protected String myValue() {
        return "ChildClass";
    }
}

and so on