Polymorphism against overload methods

[giovanni giuseppe]

Hi,
first sorry for my english...

I have a problem. I have two classes : father class (Father) and a subclass (Son) that inherits from Father.
In another class i declare :

int flag;
Father father = getRightClass();

//further code here

public Father getRightClass(){flag == 0 ? new Father(): new Son();}

Now How can i create two overloaded methods (es. method(Father) and method(Son) ) to get correctly object, if it is the refernce type that discriminates what method will be called?

And declare an object with an instance type that is a subclass of reference type is polimorphism?
Thanks.

[Suhas Bilaye]

Hi,

Welcome to JavaRanch!!!

Overloading
As you have rightly said, it is the reference type that decides which overloaded method will be called(if the arguments fall in the same class hierarchy else the type and no of arguments decide which overloaded method is called).

Overriding
If you want to use the Superclass reference for a subclass object and want to call the right method depending on the object and not on the reference then you can use overriding which uses runtime polymorphism i.e it decides which class method should be called depending on the object rather than the reference type.

  public class Father
{
               public void method(Father f)
              {
                    System.out.println("in father");
              }
}  


public class Son extends Father
{
             public void method(Father s)
            {
                 System.out.println("in son");
            }
}


public class Test
{
      
       public static void main(String args[])
      {
            Father f = new Father();
            Father f1 = new Son();
            f.method(f);
            f1.method(f1);
      }

}

Output will be

 in father
in son   

[giovanni giuseppe]

thanks a lot...

but the problem is that i have to declare the methods outside the class Father and Son...

There is another solution or the best way is only to declare the methods within the classes and using overriden methods?

[Hetal Vora]

Just to give you an example of method overloading, I am just roughly outlining your classes as below:

class Father{
void method1(Father f){}
Father static getRightObject(){if(some flag) return new Father(); else return new Son();}
}
class Son extends Father{
void method1(Son s){}
}

Father f = Father.getRightObject();
If getRightObject() returns you a father class object, the invocation as f.method1(f) will ofcourse invoke Father class method1.

If getRightObject() returns you a Son object, the invocation f.method1(f) still invokes Father class method1 since the reference f used for invocation is a Father reference and can see only its method1. So, even if you were to invocation syntax is f.method1((Son)f), it still invokes Father class method1.

If you are sure that the object returned is Son object, you can do the following to invoke Son class method1()
((Son)f).method1((Son)f);

[Suhas Bilaye]

but the problem is that i have to declare the methods outside the class Father and Son

Well overloading is compile time polymorphism and overriding is run time polymorphism, the requirement that you have is you want to use Father reference to point to a Son or Father object and the call to method() should call the respective method during runtime depending on the object and not on the reference.
Since you are actually expecting runtime polymorphism in your scenario overriding is the only option.

Regards,
Suhas

[giovanni giuseppe]

Yes ithink that is the only solution.....thanks at all!!!