Java generics passing parameters

Question

Hope somebody can help me out of this confussion.

I made this method:

public static <T> void myMethod(Map<Class<T>, MyInterface<T>> map) {
}

Used paramter T in order to make sure that the class used as key is the same as the class used as parameter in MyInterface.

Now I want to pass a map which different classes as keys, of course, and corresponding implementations of MyInterface.

But it doesn't work, getting syntax errors because of type parameters. Here is the code, I hope is self explanatory.

    import java.util.HashMap;
    import java.util.Map;

    public class Test {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Map<Class<?>, MyInterface<?>> map = new HashMap<Class<?>, MyInterface<?>>();

    //      Map<Class<Object>, MyInterface<Object>> map = new HashMap<Class<Object>, MyInterface<Object>>();

        map.put(Object.class, new MyObjectImpl());

        //if I use Map<Class<Object>, MyInterface<Object>> I get a compiler error here
        //because map<String> is not map<Object> basically
        map.put(String.class, new MyStringImpl());

        //this would be possible using <?>, which is exactly what I don't want
    //      map.put(String.class, new MyIntegerImpl());

        //<?> generates anyways a compiler error
        myMethod(map);
    }

    //use T to make sure the class used as key is the same as the class of the parameter "object" in doSomething  
    public static <T> void myMethod(Map<Class<T>, MyInterface<T>> map) {

    }

    interface MyInterface<T> {
        void doSomething(T object);
    }

    static class MyObjectImpl implements MyInterface<Object> {
        @Override
        public void doSomething(Object object) {
            System.out.println("MyObjectImpl doSomething");
        }
    }

    static class MyStringImpl implements MyInterface<String> {
        @Override
        public void doSomething(String object) {
            System.out.println("MyStringImpl doSomething");
        }
    }

    static class MyIntegerImpl implements MyInterface<Integer> {
        @Override
        public void doSomething(Integer object) {
            System.out.println("MyIntegerImpl doSomething");
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

You can't do that, because there is no constraint defined in Map's put() method between the key and the value. If you want to assure that your map is populated properly (i.e. create such constraint), hide the map behind some API that will check the correctness, for example:

public <T> void registerInterface(Class<T> clazz, MyInterface<T> intf) {
    map.put(clazz, intf);
}

Then, just call the registerInterface instead of manually populating the map.

Answer 2

As far as I know, you cannot declare a Map like you describe in Java. All you can do is performing type checking and/or add constraints.

Guava offers something that approaches your problem with ClassToInstanceMap. So one way to do this would be to use MapConstraints.constrainedMap (like the example below)

import java.text.ParseException;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;

import com.google.common.collect.MapConstraint;
import com.google.common.collect.MapConstraints;

public class Main {

    interface MyInterface<T> {
        void doSomething(T object);

        Class<T> getType();
    }

    static class MyObjectImpl implements MyInterface<Object> {
        @Override
        public void doSomething(Object object) {
            System.out.println("MyObjectImpl doSomething");
        }

        @Override
        public Class<Object> getType() {
            return Object.class;
        }
    }

    static class MyStringImpl implements MyInterface<String> {
        @Override
        public void doSomething(String object) {
            System.out.println("MyStringImpl doSomething");
        }

        @Override
        public Class<String> getType() {
            return String.class;
        }
    }

    static class MyIntegerImpl implements MyInterface<Integer> {
        @Override
        public void doSomething(Integer object) {
            System.out.println("MyIntegerImpl doSomething");
        }

        @Override
        public Class<Integer> getType() {
            return Integer.class;
        }
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws ParseException {

        Map<Class<?>, MyInterface<?>> map = MapConstraints.constrainedMap(new HashMap<Class<?>, Main.MyInterface<?>>(),
                new MapConstraint<Class<?>, MyInterface<?>>() {
                    @Override
                    public void checkKeyValue(Class<?> key, MyInterface<?> value) {
                        if (value == null) {
                            throw new NullPointerException("value cannot be null");
                        }
                        if (value.getType() != key) {
                            throw new IllegalArgumentException("Value is not of the correct type");
                        }
                    }
                });
        map.put(Integer.class, new MyIntegerImpl());
        map.put(String.class, new MyStringImpl());
        map.put(Object.class, new MyObjectImpl());
        map.put(Float.class, new MyIntegerImpl()); //<-- Here you will get an exception
    }
}