How are Anonymous inner classes used in Java?

Question

What is the use of anonymous classes in Java? Can we say that usage of anonymous class is one of the advantages of Java?

Answer 1

They're commonly used as a verbose form of callback.

I suppose you could say they're an advantage compared to not having them, and having to create a named class every time, but similar concepts are implemented much better in other languages (as closures or blocks)

Here's a swing example

myButton.addActionListener(new ActionListener(){
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
        // do stuff here...
    }
});

Although it's still messily verbose, it's a lot better than forcing you to define a named class for every throw away listener like this (although depending on the situation and reuse, that may still be the better approach)