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An interface is a collection of abstract methods. A class implements an interface, thereby inheriting the abstract methods of the interface. An interface is not a class. Writing an interface is similar to writing a class, but they are two different concepts. A class describes the attributes and behaviors of an object. An interface contains behaviors that a class implements.
Unless the class that implements the interface is abstract, all the methods of the interface need to be defined in the class. An interface is similar to a class in the following ways:
However, an interface is different from a class in several ways, including:
Declaring Interfaces:
The interface keyword is used to declare an interface. Here is a simple example to declare an interface.
Example:
Interfaces have the following properties:
Example:
Implementing Interfaces:
When a class implements an interface, you can think of the class as signing a contract, agreeing to perform the specific behaviors of the interface. If a class does not perform all the behaviors of the interface, the class must declare itself as abstract.
A class uses the implements keyword to implement an interface. The implements keyword appears in the class declaration following the extends portion of the declaration.
Output:
When overriding methods defined in interfaces there are several rules to be followed:
When implementation interfaces there are several rules:
Extending Interfaces:
An interface can extend another interface, similarly to the way that a class can extend another class. The extends keyword is used to extend an interface, and the child interface inherits the methods of the parent interface.
The following Sports interface is extended by Hockey and Football interfaces.
The Hockey interface has four methods, but it inherits two from Sports; thus, a class that implements Hockey needs to implement all six methods. Similarly, a class that implements Football needs to define the three methods from Football and the two methods from Sports.
Extending Multiple Interfaces:
A Java class can only extend one parent class. Multiple inheritance is not allowed. Interfaces are not classes, however, and an interface can extend more than one parent interface. The extends keyword is used once, and the parent interfaces are declared in a comma-separated list.
For example, if the Hockey interface extended both Sports and Event, it would be declared as:
Tagging Interfaces:
The most common use of extending interfaces occurs when the parent interface does not contain any methods. For example, the MouseListener interface in the java.awt.event package extended java.util.EventListener, which is defined as:
An interface with no methods in it is referred to as a tagging interface. There are two basic design purposes of tagging interfaces:
Creates a common parent: As with the EventListener interface, which is extended by dozens of other interfaces in the Java API, you can use a tagging interface to create a common parent among a group of interfaces. For example, when an interface extends EventListener, the JVM knows that this particular interface is going to be used in an event delegation scenario.
Adds a data type to a class: This situation is where the term tagging comes from. A class that implements a tagging interface does not need to define any methods (since the interface does not have any), but the class becomes an interface type through polymorphism.