Why do we have *Adapter classes in Spring Java Configuration when they are not Adapters in the general sense

Question

When using Java configuration for Spring, you must seen classes like WebMvcConfigurerAdapter & HandlerInterceptorAdapter which implement a single interface and they are following *Adpater convention which should have been reserved for a real adapter(This specific class doesn't translate calls from one interface to a different interface).

Does any one know whether there is anything wrong with my understanding/they are using wrong convention?

Answer 1

Adapter is also commonly used, at least in Java, to name base classes providing do-nothing implementations of all the methods of an interface. This is how Adapter must be understood in this context.

See for example MouseAdapter, MouseInputAdapter, MouseMotionAdapter, etc.