Java: returning subclass in superclass method signature

Question

I\'m working on a problem where there are several implementations of Foo, accompanied by several FooBuilder\'s. While Foo\'s share sev

Answer 1

This is a good question and a real problem.

The easiest way to deal with it in Java likely involves the use of generics, as mentioned in Jochen's answer.

There's a good discussion of the issue and a reasonable solution in this blog entry on Using Inheritance with Fluent Interfaces, which combines generics with the definition of a getThis() method overriden in builder subclasses to solve the problem of always returning a builder of the correct class.