Can we instantiate an abstract class?

Question

During one of my interview, I was asked \"If we can instantiate an abstract class?\"

My reply was \"No. we can\'t\". But, interviewer told me \"Wrong, we can.\"

Answer 1

It's impossible to instantiate an abstract class. What you really can do, has implement some common methods in an abstract class and let others unimplemented (declaring them abstract) and let the concrete descender implement them depending on their needs. Then you can make a factory, which returns an instance of this abstract class (actually his implementer). In the factory you then decide, which implementer to choose. This is known as a factory design pattern:

   public abstract class AbstractGridManager {
        private LifecicleAlgorithmIntrface lifecicleAlgorithm;
        // ... more private fields

        //Method implemented in concrete Manager implementors 
        abstract public Grid initGrid();

        //Methods common to all implementors
        public Grid calculateNextLifecicle(Grid grid){
            return this.getLifecicleAlgorithm().calculateNextLifecicle(grid);
        }

        public LifecicleAlgorithmIntrface getLifecicleAlgorithm() {
            return lifecicleAlgorithm;
        }
        public void setLifecicleAlgorithm(LifecicleAlgorithmIntrface lifecicleAlgorithm) {
            this.lifecicleAlgorithm = lifecicleAlgorithm;
        }
        // ... more common logic and getters-setters pairs
    }

The concrete implementer only needs to implement the methods declared as abstract, but will have access to the logic implemented in those classes in an abstract class, which are not declared abstract:

public class FileInputGridManager extends AbstractGridManager {

private String filePath;

//Method implemented in concrete Manager implementors 
abstract public Grid initGrid();

public class FileInputGridManager extends AbstractGridManager {

    private String filePath;

    //Method implemented in concrete Manager implementors 
    abstract public Grid initGrid();

    public Grid initGrid(String filePath) {
        List cells = new ArrayList<>();
        char[] chars;
        File file = new File(filePath); // for example foo.txt
        // ... more logic
        return grid;
    }
}

Then finally the factory looks something like this:

public class GridManagerFactory {
    public static AbstractGridManager getGridManager(LifecicleAlgorithmIntrface lifecicleAlgorithm, String... args){
        AbstractGridManager manager = null;

        // input from the command line
        if(args.length == 2){
            CommandLineGridManager clManager = new CommandLineGridManager();
            clManager.setWidth(Integer.parseInt(args[0]));
            clManager.setHeight(Integer.parseInt(args[1]));
            // possibly more configuration logic
            ...
            manager = clManager;
        } 
        // input from the file
        else if(args.length == 1){
            FileInputGridManager fiManager = new FileInputGridManager();
            fiManager.setFilePath(args[0]);
            // possibly more method calls from abstract class
            ...
            manager = fiManager ;
        }
        //... more possible concrete implementors
        else{
            manager = new CommandLineGridManager();
        }
        manager.setLifecicleAlgorithm(lifecicleAlgorithm);
        return manager;
    }
}

The receiver of AbstractGridManager would call the methods on him and get the logic, implemented in the concrete descender (and partially in the abstract class methods) without knowing what is the concrete implementation he got. This is also known as inversion of control or dependency injection.