interfaces

hi frndz,
what is the use of interfaces & abstraction in real time scenario.plz give a clear answer

What Is an Interface?
As you've already learned, objects define their interaction with the outside world through the methods that they expose. Methods form the object's interface with the outside world; the buttons on the front of your television set, for example, are the interface between you and the electrical wiring on the other side of its plastic casing. You press the "power" button to turn the television on and off.

In its most common form, an interface is a group of related methods with empty bodies. A bicycle's behavior, if specified as an interface, might appear as follows:

interface Bicycle {

void changeCadence(int newValue);

void changeGear(int newValue);

void speedUp(int increment);

void applyBrakes(int decrement);
}

To implement this interface, the name of your class would change (to ACMEBicycle, for example), and you'd use the implements keyword in the class declaration:
class ACMEBicycle implements Bicycle {

// remainder of this class implemented as before

}

Implementing an interface allows a class to become more formal about the behavior it promises to provide. Interfaces form a contract between the class and the outside world, and this contract is enforced at build time by the compiler. If your class claims to implement an interface, all methods defined by that interface must appear in its source code before the class will successfully compile.

:rolleyes:

Abstraction is the process of hiding the details and exposing only the essential features of a particular concept or object. Computer scientists use abstraction to understand and solve problems and communicate their solutions with the computer in some particular computer language. We illustrate this process by way of trying to solve the following problem using a computer language called Java.
Problem: Given a rectangle 4.5 ft wide and 7.2 ft high, compute its area.
We know the area of a rectangle is its width times its height. So all we have to do to solve the above problem is to multiply 4.5 by 7.2 and get the the answer. The question is how to express the above solution in Java, so that the computer can perform the computation.

Data Abstraction
The product of 4.5 by 7.2 is expressed in Java as: 4.5 * 7.2. In this expression, the symbol * represents the multiplication operation. 4.5 and 7.2 are called number literals. Using DrJava, we can type in the expresssion 4.5 * 7.2 directly in the interactions window and see the answer.
Now suppose we change the problem to compute the area of a rectangle of width 3.6 and height 9.3. Has the original problem really change at all? To put it in another way, has the essence of the original problem changed? After all, the formula for computing the answer is still the same. All we have to do is to enter 3.6 * 9.3. What is it that has not change (the invariant)? And what is it that has changed (the variant)?

Type Abstraction
The problem has not changed in that it still deals with the same geometric shape, a rectangle, described in terms of the same dimensions, its width and height. What vary are simply the values of the width and the height. The formula to compute the area of a rectangle given its width and height does not change:
width * height
It does not care what the actual specific values of width and height are. What it cares about is that the values of width and height must be such that the multiplication operation makes sense. How do we express the above invariants in Java?
We just want to think of the width and height of a given rectangle as elements of the set of real numbers. In computing, we group values with common characteristics into a set and called it a type. In Java, the type double is the set of real numbers that are implemented inside the computer in some specific way. The details of this internal representation is immaterial for our purpose and thus can be ignored. In addition to the type double, Java provides many more pre-built types such as int to represent the set of integers and char to represent the set of characters. We will examine and use them as their need arises in future examples. As to our problem, we only need to restrict ourselves to the type double.
We can define the width and the height of a rectangle as double in Java as follows.
double width;
double height;

The above two statements are called variable definitions where width and height are said to be variable names. In Java, a variable represents a memory location inside the computer. We define a variable by first declare its type, then follow the type by the name of the variable, and terminate the definition with a semi-colon. This a Java syntax rule. Violating a syntax rule constitutes an error. When we define a variable in this manner, its associated memory content is initialized to a default value specified by the Java language. For variables of type double, the default value is 0.

Once we have defined the width and height variables, we can solve our problem by writing the expression that computes the area of the associated rectangle in terms of width and height as follows.
width * height
Observe that the two variable definitions together with the expression to compute the area presented in the above directly translate the description of the problem -two real numbers representing the width and the height of a rectangle- and the high-level thinking of what the solution of the problem should be -area is the width times the height. We have just expressed the invariants of the problem and its solution. Now, how do we vary width and height in Java? We use what is called the assignment operation. To assign the value 4.5 to the variable width and the value 7.2 to the variable height, we write the following Java assignment statements.
width = 4.5;
height = 7.2;
The syntax rule for the assignment statement in Java is: first write the name of the variable, then follow it by the equal sign, then follow the equal sign by a Java expression, and terminate it with a semi-colon. The semantic (i.e. meaning) of such an assignment is: evaluate the expression on the right hand side of the equal sign and assign the resulting value into the memory location represented by the variable name on the left hand side of the equal side. It is an error if the type of the expression on the right hand side is not a subset of the type of the variable on the left hand side.
Now if we evaluate width * height again (using the Interactions Window of DrJava), we should get the desired answer. Life is good so far, though there is a little bit of inconvenience here: we have to type the expression width * height each time we are asked to compute the area of a rectangle with a given width and a given height. This may be OK for such a simple formula, but what if the formula is something much more complex, like computing the length of the diagonal of a rectangle? Re-typing the formula each time is quite an error-prone process. Is there a way to have the computer memorize the formula and perform the computation behind the scene so that we do not have to memorize it and rewrite it ourselves? The answer is yes, and it takes a little bit more work to achieve this goal in Java.
What we would like to do is to build the equivalent of a black box that takes in as inputs two real numbers (recall type double) with a button. When we put in two numbers and depress the button, "magically" the black box will compute the product of the two input numbers and spit out the result, which we will interpret as the area of a rectangle whose width and height are given by the two input numbers. This black box is in essence a specialized calculator that can only compute one thing: the area of a rectangle given a width and a height. To build this box in Java, we use a construct called a class, which looks like the following.
class AreaCalc {
double rectangle(double width, double height) {
return width * height;
}
}

What this Java code means is something like: AreaCalc is a blue print of a specialized computing machine that is capable of accepting two input doubles , one labeled width and the other labeled height, computing their product and returning the result. This computation is given a name: rectangle. In Java parlance, it is called a method for the class AreaCalc.
Here is an example of how we use AreaCalc to compute area of a rectanglee of width 4.5 and height 7.2. In the Interactions pane of DrJava, enter the following lines of code.
AreaCalc calc = new AreaCalc();
calc.rectangle(4.5, 7.2)

The first line of code defines calc as a variable of type AreaCalc and assign to it an instance of the class AreaCalc. new is a keyword in Java. It is an example of what is called a class operator. It operates on a class and creates an instance (also called object) of the given class. The second line of code is a call to the object calc to perform the rectangle task where width is assigned the value 4.5 and height is assigned the value 7.2. To get the area of a 5.6 by 8.4 rectangle, we simply use the same calculator calc again:
calc.rectangle(5.6, 8.4);
So instead of solving just one proble -given a rectangle 4.5 ft wide and 7.2 ft high, compute its area- we havebuilt a "machine" that can compute the area of any given rectangle. But what about computing the area of a right triangle with height 5 and base 4? We cannot simply use this calculator. We need another specialized calculator, the kind that can compute the area of a circle.
There are at least two different designs for such a calculator.
create a new class called AreaCalc2 with one method called rightTriangle with two input parameters of type double. This corresponds to designing a different area calculator with one button labeled rightTriangle with two input slots.
add to AreaCalc a method called rightTriangle with two input parameters of type double. This corresponds to designing an area calculator with two buttons: one labeled rectangle with two input slots and the other labeled rightTriangle, also with two input slots.

let me know if i cleared your doubt

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Interface is one of the strong concepts provided by oo languages. As the name sugest interface .the medium through your entity or other entity talk to your entity.so there are three main advantage of interface contract:- on same entity we can provide different access to different user. E.g i have a stack and implement it using two interface user admin user have only two functions push pop while admi have push pop clear peek class stack implemebnts admin,user { implementspush pop clear peek } stack s=new stack(); now if i wrapper my stack object in userinterface then any one can call push and pop only. User u=s; but if i wrapper it in admin then all the functions avalible in admin can called admin a=u; other two are solve fergile base class problem join different hararchies

[B]Interface:

[/B][LIST][*] An interface cannot inherit from a class.[*] An interface can inherit from multiple interfaces.[*] A class can inherit from multiple interfaces, but only one class.[*] Interface members must be methods, properties, events, or indexers.[*] All interface members must have public access (the default).[*] By convention, an interface name should begin with an uppercase I.[/LIST][B]Obstract:

.It can be inheritable.
.can't be instatiable..means we can't create object in main abstract class...
[/B]

hi
i think 1 use of inteface is to have a constraint on class which imlements interface
to compulsorly implement all the method defined in that interface.

[B]Interface[/B] generally refers to an abstraction that an entity provides of itself to the outside. This separates the methods of external communication from internal operation, and allows it to be internally modified without affecting the way outside entities interact with it, as well as provide multiple abstractions of itself. It may also provide a means of translation between entities which do not speak the same language, such as between a human and a computer. Because interfaces are a form of indirection, some additional overhead is incurred versus direct communication.

The interface between a human and a computer is called a user interface. Interfaces between hardware components are physical interfaces. This article deals with software interfaces, which exist between separate software components and provide a programmatic mechanism by which these components can communicate.

[B]Interfaces in practice[/B]

A piece of 'software' provides access to computer resources (such as memory, CPU, storage, etc.) by its underlying computer system; the availability of these resources to other software can have major ramifications -- sometimes disastrous ones -- for its functionality and stability. A key principle of design is to prohibit access to all resources by default, allowing access only through well-defined entry points, i.e. interfaces.[citation needed]

The types of access that interfaces provide between software components can include: constants, data types, types of procedures, exception specifications and method signatures. In some instances, it may be useful to define variables as part of the interface. It often also specifies the functionality of those procedures and methods, either by comments or (in some experimental languages) by formal logical assertions.

The interface of a software module A is deliberately kept separate from the implementation of that module. The latter contains the actual code of the procedures and methods described in the interface, as well as other "private" variables, procedures, etc.. Any other software module B (which can be referred to as a client to A) that interacts with A is forced to do so only through the interface. One practical advantage of this arrangement is that replacing the implementation of A by another one that meets the same specifications of the interface should not cause B to fail — as long as its use of A complies with the specifications of the interface