Passing instance of derived class as base class

[goatjugsoup]

Sorry, I didn't know how to describe it other than that in the title.

Say if you had a base class and then you had several derived classes i.e. Animal > Cat, Dog, Fish and you had a function that would create an instance of one of the derived classes and return it based on some input could you go about the handling of the return variable like this?

public animal doStuff(someInput)
{
//some code that either creates a cat, dog or fish, does somethings to it and then returns it
}

Just wondering if the data that is stored from the derived class would be kept or lost through doing it that way or not. As it is now in my head I think it would need to be converted to the specific child class type on the otherside.

[Fubarable]

Yes that could be done. If it were a static method, it would smell suspiciously like the Factory Pattern.

[awinston]

If you store the return of doStuff into a variable of type Animal, then it will only have access to the members of the Animal class. For example:

public class Animal
{
  public void run()
  {
     ...
  }

}

public class Dog extends Animal
{
  public void bark()
  {
     ...
  }

}

public class AnimalTest
{
  public static void main(String[] args)
  {
    AnimalTest tester = new AnimalTest();
    Animal myAnimal = tester.returnDog();
    myAnimal.run();                                 //<---- okay because run is a method of the Animal class.
    myAnimal.bark();                               //<---- not okay because bark is not a method of the Animal class, even though myAnimal technically references a Dog
  }

  public Animal returnDog()
  {
     Animal dg= new Dog();
     return dg;
  }

}

However, if you then cast myAnimal into type Dog and store it into a variable of type Dog, you can now use the methods of type Dog. For example:

Dog myDog = (Dog)myAnimal;
myDog.bark();                                        //<----now okay

[goatjugsoup]

Thanks for the replies. Just to be 100% sure, returning dog from a function with return type animal then making sure to cast to type dog where the function was called will retain any dog variable data?

[Fubarable]

On the other hand...

public class TestAnimal {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      Animal animal = Animal.getInstance(0);
      animal.speak();
      animal.move();
      
      animal = Animal.getInstance(1);
      animal.speak();
      animal.move();
   }
}

abstract class Animal {
   public abstract void move();
   public abstract void speak();
   
   public static Animal getInstance(int index) {
      switch (index) {
      case 0:
         return new Dog();
      case 1:
         return new Cat();
      default:
         String text = "index \"" + index +"\" does not correspond to a valid Animal";
         throw new IllegalArgumentException(text );
      }
   }
}

class Dog extends Animal {

   @Override
   public void move() {
      System.out.println("run");
   }

   @Override
   public void speak() {
      System.out.println("bark");
   }
   
}

class Cat extends Animal {

   @Override
   public void move() {
      System.out.println("Pounce");
   }

   @Override
   public void speak() {
      System.out.println("Meow");
   }
   
}

[awinston]

[Previous Answer Under Reconsideration]

[Fubarable]

Yes, as long as the Dog object is referenced by a variable of type Dog.

No -- You're ignoring the magic of polymorphism!
To reiterate, this is a situation that may be solved using polymorphism or generic classes. Anything to avoid too much casting which can give a program a bad smell.

[goatjugsoup]

alright, thanks again appreciate the replies, think i got it now