Empty method in an abstract class
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09-09-2019 - |
Question
I have just installed PMD to analyze my Java project. Really nice tool, highly recommended. Anyways, I got a few errors saying:
"An empty method in an abstract class should be abstract instead"
I checked out PMD documentation and the explanation says:
as developer may rely on this empty implementation rather than code the appropriate one
So I think I understand the reason behind this code style error, but consider the following scenario: I have an abstract class called Entity. This class has a boolean method with default implementation. (controls whether to delete its related entities upon deletion). Only a few of the derived classes override this default behavior to true.
Should I remove the default implementation and force all deriving classes to declare their behavior? Do you really think this pattern is such a bad practice?
Clarification: PMD treats a method with single return statement as empty.
Solution
I think it's just a guideline. It tells you so that you might want to reconsider your design, but if your design already makes perfect sense, there's no reason to obey a software instead of your brain.
OTHER TIPS
If you are on Java 1.8, you can make Entity an interface instead of an abstract class and write a default implementation for your method in it.
public interface Entity {
default boolean yourMethod() {
//default implementation ...
}
}
You can use this for reference : https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/IandI/defaultmethods.html