Why would you declare an Interface and then instantiate an object with it in Java?

Question

A friend and I are studying Java. We were looking at interfaces today and we got into a bit of an discussion about how interfaces are used.

The example code my frie

Answer 1

Because you don't really care what the implementation is... only what it's behavior is.

Say you have an animal

interface Animal {
    String speak();
}

class Cat implements Animal {

    void claw(Furniture f) { /* code here */ }

    public String speak() { return "Meow!" }
}

class Dog implements Animal {

    void water(FireHydrant fh) { /* code here */ }

    public String speak() { return "Woof!"; }
}

Now you want to give your kid a pet.

Animal pet = new ...?
kid.give(pet);

And you get it back later

Animal pet = kid.getAnimal();

You wouldn't want to go

pet.claw(favorateChair);

Because you don't know if the kid had a dog or not. And you don't care. You only know that --Animals-- are allowed to speak. You know nothing about their interactions with furniture or fire hydrants. You know animals are for speaking. And it makes your daughter giggle (or not!)

kid.react(pet.speak());

With this, when you make a goldfish, the kid's reaction is pretty lame (turns out goldfishes don't speak!) But when you put in a bear, the reaction is pretty scary!

And you couldn't do this if you said

Cat cat = new Cat();

because you're limiting yourself to the abilities of a Cat.