Question

If say I have some generic class, for example:

public class Attribute<T> {

}

Is it possible now to have specific methods for specific types? I.e. to extend the generic class for certain kinds of types?

For example:

I want to add extra methods to Attribute<String>, but not for say Attribute<Integer>.

Answer 1

There is no such direct possibility in Java.

But you can have StringAttribute that extends Attribute<String> and adds to it the methods you’d like to. You can make a kind of factory, in a dependency injection fashion, which will construct e.g. Attribute<Integer> for Integer and StringAttribute for String.