How to design classes in this use case?

Question

I have three classes-A,B,C in java. Conditions-

A can access members of B and C
B can access members of C
C cannot access members of A and B
B cannot access members of A

If I declare members of B,C as protected and put all the classes in a package, I won't able to enforce the 3rd and 4th condition. What should be the approach here?

I can see that most of the answers mentioned that I can directly do inheritance like A <- B <- C. But, lets assume we have classes like patient and doctor. So, doctor needs to know the details a patient given a patient id. Implementation wise If I extend doctor from patient, that will solve the use case. But, logically it doesn't make sense to me to extend doctor from patient as doctor is not a patient.

Looks like A extends B, and C has public members. – Federico klez Culloca Mar 16 '22 at 08:33 — Federico klez Culloca, Mar 16 '22 at 08:33

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 16 '22 at 08:46

You should create proper interfaces for each usecase and instead of using classes directly accept interfaces

For example it could look like

interface AccessibleA {
    int getA();
    void setA(int a);
    // other methods declarations - non accessors
}

interface InaccessibleA {
    // other methods declarations - non accessors
}

class A implements AccessibleA, InaccessibleA {
    private int a;

    // getter and setter

    public A(AccessibleB b, AccessibleC c) {
        // you can assign these values or use them
    }

    // other methods
}

// the same interfaces for B and C

class B implements AccessibleB, InaccessibleB {
    private int b;

    // getter and setter

    public A(InaccessibleA a, AccessibleC c) {
        // you can assign these values or use them
    }

    // other methods
}

// etc

Unfortunately in Java there is not "friend function" implementation (there is something like this in C++) however there are some ways to mock this behaviour. For example read:

Is there a way to simulate the C++ 'friend' concept in Java?

Just I'm not sure does it worth in your case

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 16 '22 at 08:55

Like this

package c;
class C { 
    protected String foo;
}

package b;
class B extends C { 
    protected String bar;
}

package a;
class A extends B { 
    protected String baz;
}

protected fields are visible to subclasses in a different package, default (package-private) fields are only visible to subclasses in the same package.

See the documentation

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 16 '22 at 08:57

You can use inheritence here. If C is the parent most class, B can inherit C, and A can inherit B. So in this scenerio, A can access his parent B and parent's parent C, B can access his parent C, While C cannot access A or B. and B cannot access A as B is the parent class of A.

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 16 '22 at 09:48

I think I should have mentioned the exact use case I was thinking while writing the question. I updated my question later accordingly. For my use case, I think aggregation is the right approach instead of inheritance as the classes has has-a relationship instead of is-a.

How to design classes in this use case?

4 Answers4