Initializing final fields in Java

Question

I have a class with lots of final members which can be instantiated using one of two constructors. The constructors share some code, which is stored in a third constructor.

Answer 1

You get this error because if you had called MyClass(SomeType oneIn), two is not initialized.

Answer 2

You need to make sure that in every constructor you are initializing all final variables. What I would do is have one constructor that initializes all the variables and have all the other constructor call that, passing in null or some default value if there is a field that they are not given a value for.

Example:

public class MyClass {
    private final SomeType one;
    private final SuperType two;

    //constructor that initializes all variables
    public MyClas(SomeType _one, SuperType _two) {
        one = _one;
        two = _two;
    }

    private MyClass(SomeType _one) {
        this(_one, null);
    }

    public MyClass(SomeType _one, SubTypeOne _two) {
        this(_one, _two);
    }

    public MyClass(SomeType _one, SubTypeTwo _two) {
        this(_one, _two);
    }
}

Answer 3

How about this? (Updated for changed question)

public class MyClass {

    private final SomeType one;
    private final SuperType two;

    public MyClass (SomeType commonArg, int intIn) {
        this(commonArg, new SubTypeOne(intIn));
    }

    public MyClass (SomeType commonArg, String stringIn) {
        this(commonArg, new SubTypeTwo(stringIn));
    }

    private MyClass (SomeType commonArg, SuperType twoIn) {
        one = commonArg;
        two = twoIn;
    }
}

Answer 4

All you need to do is ensure that "two" gets initialized. In the first constructor, just add:

two = null;

unless there's some other value you'd like to give it in the event that only the first constructor is called.