Avoding instanceof in Java

Question

In my application I have a 2d array of entities to represent a grid. Each location in the grid can either be empty or occupied by an entity (in this case it's just a person or wall). Right now I use instanceof to check whether an entity is a person or a wall.

I was thinking of giving each entity a method which returns an enum stating their type so i.e. a wall entity would return EntityType.WALL. I was wondering if this is the best idea to remove the use of instanceof or is instanceof suitable in this scenario?

Answer 1

Use Tell, Don't Ask: instead of asking the objects what they are and then reacting on that, tell the object what to do and then walls or people do decide how they do what they need to do.

For example:

Instead of having something like this:

public class Wall {     // ... }  public class Person {     // ... }  // later public class moveTo(Position pos) {     Object whatIsThere = pos.whatIsThere();     if (whatIsThere instanceof Wall) {          System.err.println("You cannot move into a wall");     }     else if (whatIsThere instanceof Person) {          System.err.println("You bump into " + person.getName());     }     // many more else branches... } 

do something like this:

public interface DungeonFeature {     void moveInto(); }  public class Wall implements DungeonFeature {     @Override     public void moveInto() {         System.err.println("You bump into a wall");     }     // ... }  public class Person implements DungeonFeature {     private String name;      @Override     public void moveInto() {         System.err.println("You bump into " + name);     }      // ... }  // and later public void moveTo(Position pos) {     DungeonFeature df = currentPosition();     df.moveTo(pos); } 

This has some advantages.

First, you don't need to adjust a giant if then else tree each time you add a new dungeon feature.

Second, the code in the dungeon features is self-contained, the logic is all in the said object. You can easily test it and move it.