Multiple inheritance for an anonymous class

Question

Anonymous classes must extend or implement something, like any other Java class, even if it's just java.lang.Object.

For example:

Runnable r = new Runnable() {
   public void run() { ... }
};

Here, r is an object of an anonymous class which implements Runnable.

An anonymous class can extend another class using the same syntax:

SomeClass x = new SomeClass() {
   ...
};

What you can't do is implement more than one interface. You need a named class to do that. Neither an anonymous inner class, nor a named class, however, can extend more than one class.

An anonymous class usually implements an interface:

new Runnable() { // implements Runnable!
   public void run() {}
}

JFrame.addWindowListener( new WindowAdapter() { // extends  class
} );

If you mean whether you can implement 2 or more interfaces, than I think that's not possible. You can then make a private interface which combines the two. Though I cannot easily imagine why you would want an anonymous class to have that:

 public class MyClass {
   private interface MyInterface extends Runnable, WindowListener { 
   }

   Runnable r = new MyInterface() {
    // your anonymous class which implements 2 interaces
   }

 }

Anonymous classes always extend superclass or implements interfaces. for example:

button.addActionListener(new ActionListener(){ // ActionListener is an interface
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e){
    }
});

Moreover, although anonymous class cannot implement multiple interfaces, you can create an interface that extends other interface and let your anonymous class to implement it.

I guess nobody understood the question. I guess what this guy wanted was something like this:

return new (class implements MyInterface {
    @Override
    public void myInterfaceMethod() { /*do something*/ }
});

because this would allow things like multiple interface implementations:

return new (class implements MyInterface, AnotherInterface {
    @Override
    public void myInterfaceMethod() { /*do something*/ }

    @Override
    public void anotherInterfaceMethod() { /*do something*/ }
});

this would be really nice indeed; but that's not allowed in Java.

What you can do is use local classes inside method blocks:

public AnotherInterface createAnotherInterface() {
    class LocalClass implements MyInterface, AnotherInterface {
        @Override
        public void myInterfaceMethod() { /*do something*/ }

        @Override
        public void anotherInterfaceMethod() { /*do something*/ }
    }
    return new LocalClass();
}

// The interface
interface Blah {
    void something();
}

...

// Something that expects an object implementing that interface
void chewOnIt(Blah b) {
    b.something();
}

...

// Let's provide an object of an anonymous class
chewOnIt(
    new Blah() {
        @Override
        void something() { System.out.println("Anonymous something!"); }
    }
);