Question

I’m trying to create a game using the best practices to my knowledge.
I have:

• a VisibleObject with a protected void draw(Canvas c) function
• a MapTile that extends VisibleObject to draw itself.
• a Map class that contains a LinkedList of MapTiles, tiles.

In the Map class i wanted a loop like this:

public void draw(Canvas c){
        for(MapTile tile : tiles){
            tile.draw(c);
        }
    }

But i realised i could not call draw upon each tile because it’s a protected method in VisibleObject.
I can think of 3 possible solutions:

1. Just change protected to public in VisibleObject.
2. Create a public method of MapTile that just calls super.draw(c) (I think that’s valid syntax?)
3. change the for loop in Map to something like this, which i believe would make it valid.

New Loop:

MapTile current;
for(MapTile tile : tiles){
    current = tile;
    current.draw(c);
}

Which solution would be better programming practice?

Answer 1

I would go for version 2. Version 1 would introduce access modifiers in the parent that perhaps should not be there (e.g. going from protected to public), while version 3 does not make much sense, since you are still using an instance of MapTile (even if it did, it looks awkward and unnatural).

If any of the children of a class need to expose a protected method of the parent the best idea is to create a public method that calls the parent method.