Change the default behavior of my own classes to output value

Question

I am creating a mini class in Java:

public class ObjectInfo {
    public Object value = null;
    public Boolean isMax = null;
}

I want to make it so this class will output value whenever I call an instance.

Example:

public final void testSomething() {
    ObjectInfo actual = new OjbectInfo(11f, true);
    assertEquals(11f, (Float) actual);
}

I would like to make the class such that when I call actual like above, it knows to extract out the value parameter.

Is there any way to do this?

What I'd also like to do is say

actual = 1234f

I would like Java to know to shove that value into value and

actual = false

Put that into isMax

I know this can be done in C++ with operator overloading, but I can't seem to find anything on it for Java, at least on Google...

I noticed I got flagged down... I think that is slightly unfair since I just didn't know this fact in Java (got mixed up with c++). I was able to overcome my issues using various Number class manipulation. Kind of hokey but it still works great and fast. — E.S., Jun 05 '13 at 21:21

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 05 '13 at 00:05

1

No, Java doesn't have user-definable operator overloading.

The best you could do is add an asFloat() method.

answered Jun 05 '13 at 00:05

Oliver Charlesworth

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score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 05 '13 at 00:06

1

You cannot do this in Java. Instead you should add setter and getter methods or the properties you want to access. For example #setFloat( float value ) and #getFloat(). Then write test something like this:

assertEquals( 11f, actual.getFloat() );

answered Jun 05 '13 at 00:06

robert_difalco

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Change the default behavior of my own classes to output value

2 Answers2