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

Honestly your argument is rather moot. What's happening here is an implicit conversion to an IVehicle. You and your friend seem to be arguing about whether it's better to do it immediately (as per the first code listing), or later on (when you call the method, as per the second code listing). Either way, it's going to be implicitly converted to an IVehicle, so the real question is -- do you need to deal with a Car, or just a Vehicle? If all you need is an IVehicle, the first way is perfectly fine (and preferable if at a later point you want to transparently swap out a car for a bike). If you need to treat it like a car at other points in your code, then just leave it as a car.

Answer 2

Your intuition is correct; the type of a variable should be as specific as possible.

This is unlike method return types and parameter types; there API designers want to be a little abstract so the API can be more flexible.

Variables are not part of APIs. They are implementation details. Abstraction usually doesn't apply.

Answer 3

Program to an interface rather than an implementation.

When you program to an interface you will write code that can handle any kind of Vehicle. So in the future your code, without modification, should work with Trains and Planes.

If you ignore the interface then you are stuck with CArs and Bikes, and any new Vehicles will require additional code modifications.

The principle behind this is:

Open to Extension, Closed to Modification.

Answer 4

There is a big plus on declaring them using the interface, which is what is known as "coding to an interface" instead of "coding to an implementation" which is a big Object Oriented Design (OOD) principle, this way you can declare a method like this:

public void (IVehicle myVehicle)

and this will accept any object that implements that interface, then at runtime it will call the implementation like this:

public void (IVehicle myVehicle)
{
    myVehicle.run() //This calls the implementation for that particular vehicle.
}

To answer the original question, why would you use one over the other there are several reasons:

1) Declaring them using an interface, means you can later substitute that value with any other concrete class that implements that interface, instead of being locked into that particular concrete class

2) You can take full advantage of polymorphism by declaring them using an interface, because each implementation can call the correct method at runtime.

3) You follow the OOD principle of code to an interface