In the Object-Oriented theory, there come situations that demand that you should declare your class in such a way that it should not be inherited. Typically, it occurs if the functionality that is provided by the class should not be changed, or more appropriately, overridden. In this article, I discuss two ways to implement this behavior in the Java language, the official way and the unofficial way.
The Official Way
Officially, the Java language provides the keyword ‘final’ that is supposed to fulfill this task. Consider the following code sample:
//FinalDemo.java
public final class FinalDemo {
}
Let’s make another class that is supposed to be inherited from the above class. The Java language provides the ‘extends’ keyword that enables a class to be inherited from an existing class.
//FinalDemo2.java
public class FinalDemo2 extends FinalDemo {
}
After compiling the first class, if you compile the second class, the JDK compiler will complain and you will get following error message:
FinalDemo2.java:1: cannot inherit from final FinalDemo
public class FinalDemo2 extends FinalDemo{}
^
1 error
You have stopped your first class from being inherited by another class, the official way.
The Unofficial Way
But, that’s not the only way to stop your class from being inherited by some other class. Consider the following code where I declare the constructor as private, and I declare a static method that returns an object of the class:
public class PrivateTest{
private PrivateTest(){
System.out.println("Private Default Constructor");
}
public static PrivateTest getInstance(){
return new PrivateTest();
}
}
A modified form of the above code is also known as the “Singleton Pattern,” where the getInstance method always returns only one instance of the class. But why does this code stop this class from being inherited? Consider the following code that is supposed to be inherited from the above class:
public class PrivateTest2 extends PrivateTest{
}
After compiling the first class, if you compile the second class, the JDK compiler will complain and you will get the following error message:
PrivateTest2.java:1: PrivateTest() has private access in PrivateTest
public class PrivateTest2 extends PrivateTest{
^
1 error
The second class is unable to inherit the first class. But what does this error mean? The Java language makes it compulsory to provide at least one constructor in your class. If you do not provide any constructor in your class, the JDK compiler will insert the so-called default constructor in your class; in other words, that constructor with no arguments, with an empty body, and with a public access modifier. But if you define a constructor by yourself, the JDK compiler will not insert a default constructor for you. What we did in class PrivateTest was that we declared the default constructor, but we changed the access modifier to private, which is legal by the rules of JDK compiler.
Now comes the second part. The Java language also makes it compulsory that you put the call to the super class constructor as the first call in your constructor. This is necessary to enable the inheritance features. We achieve this functionality by calling the appropriate super() method in Java, that should map to appropriate super class constructor. If you do not provide a default constructor, than JDK compiler will insert a default super constructor call in your constructor.
What I did in the first class that I make the constructor private. Now, when I inherit that class in the other class, the compiler tries to put in the default super constructor call. Because the scope of the super class constructor is set to private, the compiler complains that it is unable to call the super constructor. Hence, we stopped a class being inherited by some other class, the unofficial way.
Happy Programming.
Usman Saleem
Mohammad Ali Jinnah University
E-mail: usman_saleem@yahoo.com
