[jdom-interest] Query regarding the Parent/Child interfaces.

[Simon Gauld]

It's been a long, long time since I looked at the lists, so excuse me if I'm
bringing up a dead topic however it seems relevant as #1 is about to be
released.  Bear with me - controversial questions are ahead!:

Regarding the Parent/Child interfaces on the Element class -

- I have always understood that the use of interfaces within Java is to
describe  relationships between objects in terms of Object A "is a" B.  For
example, "a Pineapple is a Fruit".   

(Please excuse my OO 101) - 

this allows me as a programmer to express common functionality across
objects. 

Assuming I didn't misunderstand that part of my OO class, then this means
that when combined with java's nice instanceof, I can now determine if a
Pinnable "Is A" fruit, by saying  

if ( pineapple instanceof Fruit ) {
	.. and do pineapple related menu stuff


-- applying this to the JDOM world now, I can say

if ( myElt instaneof Parent ) {
   // 
	parentCount++;

(Okay, OO 101 is finished.)

-- except, this isn't a correct way of determining if a given Element is
actually a Parent ("Parent" in my world means it has children, not it can
have children.  For example, a loose model of myself might be

class simon implements person;		// note not class simon implements
parent, child, person.  

because I ain't a parent.  I work out if I'm a parent by being asked -
"simon, do you have any children?" - at which point I say "No".  At some
point I might say "Yes" in the future, meaning I am a parent.

Elements now look to me like parents , *always*.  If they have children, if
they don't, they're parents.   Similarly the whole shebang applies to the
Child interface - a new Element instance not attached to anything "is a
Parent" and "is a Child".  It isn't, is it?.

Now I know that I can ask an Element if it is a parent by asking for a count
of its children, however the model seems to be wrong.  When and why did the
model change to have Parent and Child interfaces on the Element.   Was it
because asking .getChildren().size() > 0 was deemed not enough?

.s


simon gauld
programmer, enabling services, 3
direct 01628 76 5443
mobile 07711 314 053
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