Question

Take the following example. There’s an object I want to use, call it a Doodad. Doodad elements have poorly implemented handling of browser events. Typical instantiation of a Doodad would be Doodad someDoodad = new Doodad();. Obviously this isn’t suiting my needs because of the poor event handling. Is it appropriate for me to override the onBrowserEvent() method, like so:

Doodad someDoodad = new Doodad() {
@Override
  public void onBrowserEvent(Event event) {
      switch (DOM.eventGetType(event)) {
          case Event.ONDBLCLICK:
          case Event.ONFOCUS:
          case Event.ONCLICK:
              if (!isEnabled()) {
                  return;
              }
              break;
      }
      super.onBrowserEvent(event);
  }
};

Obviously this is a simple example, but when might I not want to use an anonymous inner class? Is it ever explicitly disallowed or impossible?

I’m seeing lots of answers to the first question, but none of the answers so far answer the second: Is it ever explicitly disallowed or impossible to use an anonymous inner class?

Answer 1

Typically the best usage of anonymous inner classes is when you want to create only one instance of specific implementation of this class. And when the implementation is pretty simple. Ideally it should contain 1-2 lines of code.

In your case it is still OK although your method onBrowserEvent() is longer than 2 lines.