interface as a method parameter in Java

Question

I had an interview days ago and was thrown a question like this.

Q: Reverse a linked list. Following code is given:

public class ReverseList { 
    i         


        

Answer 1

This is one possible implementation:

public class ReverseList { 
interface NodeList {
    int getItem();
    NodeList nextNode();
}

static class Node implements NodeList {
    private int item;
    private Node next;

    @Override
    public int getItem() {
        return item;
    }

    public void setItem(int si) {
        item = si;
    }

    @Override
    public NodeList nextNode() {
        return this.next;
    }

    public void setNext(Node n) {this.next=n;}

}

Node reverse(NodeList head) {
    Node node = (Node) head;
    Node previous = null;
    while(node.nextNode() !=null) {
        Node tempNext = (Node) node.nextNode();
        node.setNext(previous);
        previous = node;
        node = tempNext;
    }
    node.setNext(previous);
    return node;

}
public static void main(String[] args) {
    //Initialization block
    ReverseList rl = new ReverseList();
    Node n1= new Node(); n1.setItem(1);
    Node n2=new Node(); n2.setItem(2);
    Node n3 =new Node(); n3.setItem(3);
    n1.setNext(n2); n2.setNext(n3); n3.setNext(null);

    //Reversing the list
    System.out.println("Before reversal");      
    System.out.println(n1.getItem() +"->" 
                    + n1.nextNode().getItem() + "->"
                    + n1.nextNode().nextNode().getItem() + "->"
                    +n1.nextNode().nextNode().nextNode());


    rl.reverse(n1);

    System.out.println("\nAfter reversal");
    System.out.println(n3.getItem() +"->" 
            + n3.nextNode().getItem() + "->"
            + n3.nextNode().nextNode().getItem() + "->"
            +n3.nextNode().nextNode().nextNode());
        }
}

Program output:

Before reversal
1->2->3->null

After reversal
3->2->1->null

I am very curious to know if this problem can be solved by using an anonymous class. Any ideas?

Answer 2

This is in fact one of the most common and useful ways to use an interface. The interface defines a contract, and your code can work with any class that implements the interface, without having to know the concrete class - it can even work with classes that didn't exist yet when the code was written.

There are many examples in the Java standard API, especially in the collections framework. For example, Collections.sort() can sort anything that implements the List interface (not just ArrayList or LinkedList, though implementing your own List is uncommon) and whose contents implement the Comparable interface (not just String or the numerical wrapper classes - and having your own class implement Comparable for that purpose is quite common).