What's wrong with overridable method calls in constructors?

Question

I have a Wicket page class that sets the page title depending on the result of an abstract method.

public abstract class BasicPage extends WebPage {

    pub         


        

Answer 1

Here is an example that reveals the logical problems that can occur when calling an overridable method in the super constructor.

class A {

    protected int minWeeklySalary;
    protected int maxWeeklySalary;

    protected static final int MIN = 1000;
    protected static final int MAX = 2000;

    public A() {
        setSalaryRange();
    }

    protected void setSalaryRange() {
        throw new RuntimeException("not implemented");
    }

    public void pr() {
        System.out.println("minWeeklySalary: " + minWeeklySalary);
        System.out.println("maxWeeklySalary: " + maxWeeklySalary);
    }
}

class B extends A {

    private int factor = 1;

    public B(int _factor) {
        this.factor = _factor;
    }

    @Override
    protected void setSalaryRange() {
        this.minWeeklySalary = MIN * this.factor;
        this.maxWeeklySalary = MAX * this.factor;
    }
}

public static void main(String[] args) {
    B b = new B(2);
    b.pr();
}

The result would actually be:

minWeeklySalary: 0

maxWeeklySalary: 0

This is because the constructor of class B first calls the constructor of class A, where the overridable method inside B gets executed. But inside the method we are using the instance variable factor which has not yet been initialized (because the constructor of A has not yet finished), thus factor is 0 and not 1 and definitely not 2 (the thing that the programmer might think it will be). Imagine how hard would be to track an error if the calculation logic was ten times more twisted.

I hope that would help someone.