Question about gets and sets and when to use super classes
- by Nazgulled
Hi,
I have the following get method:
public List<PersonalMessage> getMessagesList() {
List<PersonalMessage> newList = new ArrayList<PersonalMessage>();
for(PersonalMessage pMessage : this.listMessages) {
newList.add(pMessage.clone());
}
return newList;
}
And you can see that if I need to change the implementation from ArrayList to something else, I can easily do it and I just have to change the initialization of newList and all other code that depends on what getMessageList() returns will still work.
Then I have this set method:
public void setMessagesList(ArrayList<PersonalMessage> listMessages) {
this.listMessages = listMessages;
}
My question is, should I use List instead of `ArrayList in the method signature?
I have decided to use ArrayList because this way I can force the implementation I want, otherwise there could be a mess with different types of lists here and there.
But I'm not sure if this is the way to go...
