Multi-format calculator - Software Development Case Studies in Java - page 132

At this point we can also better define the responsibility of the class
Format and its derived classes. It must provide two main functionalities:
■ parsing: convert a string representation of a number to the internal repre-
sentation, i.e. to a Rational object; this is performed by method parse() ;
■ printing: convert a number from the internal representation to a string
format; this is done by method toString() .
Class Format is abstract therefore it only defines these methods and dele-
gates their implementation to its derived classes. A relevant feature of the
format classes is to provide the name of the format. This makes it possible to
know which the current format is.
To better understand how the polymorphic implementation of the format
works, we can observe a simple scenario that involves the parsing of an
operand provided by the command line interpreter. The collaboration
diagram of Figure 6.6 describes this scenario.
The sequence of operations is as follows. The command interpreter inserts
a new operand in the calculator by means of the addOperand method (1).
This method delegates the task of parsing the string to the current format
(i.e. to the object currently connected through the format relationship). In
this case it is an instance of the FixedPoint class; this is done invoking the
method parse() (2). The method parse creates a new Rational object, which
will contain the value, and returns it. Before terminating, the addOperand()
method links the value returned by parse() as the second operand of the
calculator, i.e. it is linked to the operand in the role operand_1 .

6.4.3 Implementation

In order to have well-structured code, all the calculator-related classes are
put into the multi-format package. Therefore all the classes are preceded by
the package declaration:

package multiformat;
Class Rational implements the internal representation of operands and
results. It represents rational numbers by means of a numerator and a
denominator.

1 : addOperand() 2 : parse()

command :
Command

format :
FixedPoint

calc calc : Calculator format

3 : new

rational :
Rational

Figure 6.6 Collaboration of calculator classes