Problem
I have a design issue I can't solve clevely. I'm sure there's an elegent solution, but I can't figure out how achieve it. I still managed to my my code work, but the result is ugly, and I want to learn better designs.
I did my best to provide a minimal implementation with only the bare minimum. Some aspects might therefore look weird. I hope I will get myself clear.
Context
So first, I have these simple classes that both implement the same interface:
public interface Human
{
string getName();
}
public class Adult : Human
{
public Adult(string name, string job)
{
Name = name;
Job = job;
}
public string Name { get; set; }
public string Job { get; set; }
public string getName()
{
return Name;
}
}
public class Child : Human
{
public Child(string name, string toy)
{
Name = name;
Toy = toy;
}
public string Name { get; set; }
public string Toy { get; set; }
public string getName()
{
return Name;
}
}
I use those classes in another, more complex class, that basically have the folloing structure:
class MasterClass
{
public string Name;
public string Job;
public string Toy;
private ObservableCollection<Adult> ListOfAdults;
private ObservableCollection<Child> ListOfChildren;
private ObservableCollection<Human> CurrentList; // Will point to one of the above list
public void InitiateLists()
{
// Populate above lists with data
}
public Human CurrentHuman;
public void ManageAdults()
{
CurrentList = new ObservableCollection<Human>(ListOfAdults);
}
public void ManageChildren()
{
CurrentList = new ObservableCollection<Human>(ListOfChildren);
}
public void setOtherHuman()
{
// Sets CurrentHuman as another adult/child according to currently managed list
}
public void SetManager(string newType)
{
switch (newType)
{
case "adult":
ManageAdults();
break;
case "child":
ManageChildren();
break;
}
}
void UpdateInfo()
{
// Set Name and Toy/Job according to currently managed human
}
void PrintInfo()
{
// Print Name and Toy/Job according to currently managed human
}
}
This is the skeleton of my current implementation, with aspects I can't modify due to other constraints. In this class, I want the methods PrintInfo() and UpdateInfo() to behave differently depending if the CurrentHuman is an Adult or a Child.
So far
I managed to make it work with a swich-case in both methods and some cast. Like this:
void UpdateInfo(string currentType)
{
Name = CurrentHuman.getName();
switch (currentType)
{
case: "adult":
Job = ((Adult) CurrentHuman).Job;
break;
case: "child":
Toy = ((Child) CurrentHuman).Toy;
break;
}
}
This is really not ideal though. In my actual design, I have a lot more types, and other methods that behave differently according to the type of the CurrentItem. So I'm now drowning in switch-cases. This makes my code messy, duplicated and very hard to maintain.
Possible solution with interfaces
Since I just discovered them, I thought I could use interfaces. I did my best, but couldn't get a solution to work.
I imagined a simple interface like so:
public interface IUpdater
{
void UpdateData(); // Takes the values from CurrentHuman and store them in the private members Name and Job/Toy depending on current type.
void Print();
}
I also implement my interface in two different ways:
class AdultUpdater : IUpdater
{
public void Print()
{
// Print Adult stuff only
}
public void UpdateData()
{
// Update Adult data only.
}
}
and a similar class ChildUpdater : IUpdater
. They both implement the dedicated code for the Child/Adult.
If I declare a private IUpdater Updater
as private member of my MasterClass, this allows me to change my methods ManageAdult()
and ManageChildren()
like this:
public void ManageAdults()
{
CurrentList = new ObservableCollection<Human>(ListOfAdults); // Same as before
Updater = new AdultUpdater(); // Specify implementation to use
}
(similar for ManageChildren()
).
I can then brilliantly implement my UpdateInfo()
like this:
void UpdateInfo()
{
Updater.UpdateData();
}
and my PrintInfo()
method like this:
void PrintInfo()
{
Updater.Print();
}
Interfaces are truly amazing! Oh but wait...
New problem
This seems very promising. My problem is that I don't know how to implement the code of my class AdultUpdater()
and class ChildUpdater()
. More precisely, these two classes need to access private members of the MasterClass, namely the members Name
, Job
and Toy
. The UpdateData()
need to modify them, and the Print()
need to display them. I feel so stupidely stuck at this point, so close to a very elegent solution. Does someone have an idea how to finalize this design?
Thank you for reading... I'm sorry if this issue could have been reduced to a more concise question. I had the feeling some details about my current implementation were necessary to get a suitable answer.
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