Question

Is it bad practice for a class to pass itself to its own objects?

For example:

public class MainView extends SurfaceView {
    Stack<GameObject> objs;

    public MainView() {
         new GameObject(this);
    }

    public void Add(GameObject obj) {
         objs.push(obj)
    }

    public void Remove(GameObject obj) {
         objs.pop(obj)
    }
}

public class GameObject {
    MainView parent;
    int state; 

    public GameObject(MainView parent) {
        this.parent = parent;
        parent.Add(this);
    }

    public void doStuff() {
        if(state == 1) {
              new GameObject(parent);
        } 
        else if(state == 2) {
              parent.Remove(this);
        } 
    }
}

I made an effort to remove static methods/variables. Now i have to pass the view to it’s own objects.
Is this a bad practice?
Should objects have logic or should the SurfaceView contain all the logic?

Answer 1

Are you developing a game? If so I’d suggest you have a read this and this. The surfaceview should only have the job of rendering your game objects to the screen. Each game object however should hold the logic (its behavior) and a reference to a canvas to draw to which will eventually be drawn to the surfaceview. The overall logic of the game should however be in a class (eg. named world) that takes care of all the generating and managing of all the game objects.

I hope this helps.