Java Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 29. Visitor
The ordinary way to extend a class hierarchy's behavior is to add methods that provide the
behavior you need. It may happen, though, that the behavior you need is not consistent with
the thrust of the existing object model. In other cases, the developer of a hierarchy may have
little information about the behaviors that later developers will need.
If the developers who control the hierarchy code can't or won't change quickly enough to meet
your needs, it may be impossible to extend the hierarchy's behavior without modifying the
hierarchy's classes. But V
ISITOR
lets a hierarchy developer build in support for the prospect
that another developer may want to extend the behavior of the hierarchy. The intent of
V
ISITOR
is to let you define a new operation for a hierarchy without changing the hierarchy
classes.
Supporting Visitor
Chapter 5, Composite, introduced the
MachineComponent
hierarchy and suggested several
possible behaviors for this composite structure. Suppose that the developers at Oozinoz have
built some of these behaviors into the hierarchy and have also applied V
ISITOR
to allow for
later extensions. Figure 29.1 shows the current state of the hierarchy.
Figure 29.1. The
MachineComponent
hierarchy designers planned for extension by
building in support for visitors.
