How to access an object's parent object in Java?

Question

Have a look at this example:

class Parent{
    Child child = new Child();
    Random r = new Random();
}

class Child{

    public Child(){
        //access a me         


        

Answer 1

It may be the case that if only your Parent class ever creates instances of Child, for its own internal use, then you could use inner classes, like so:

class Parent {
    Random r = new Random();
    Child child = new Child();

    private class Child {
        Child() {
            Parent.this.r; // Parent's instance of Random
        }
    }
}

There are other reasons why you may want to use inner classes. But, I'm hesitant to suggest them, because requiring access to another class's instance variables is generally not a good practise.