Anonymous classes

Anonymous Classes in Java

Anonymous classes enable you to make your code more concise. They enable you to declare and instantiate a class at the same time. They are like local classes except that they do not have a name. Use them if you need to use a local class only once. Anonymous classes can often used in graphical user interface (GUI) applications.

Declaring Anonymous Classes

public class HelloWorldAnonymousClasses {
  
    interface HelloWorld {
        public void greet();
        public void greetSomeone(String someone);
    }
  
    public void sayHello() {
        
        class EnglishGreeting implements HelloWorld {
            String name = "world";
            public void greet() {
                greetSomeone("world");
            }
            public void greetSomeone(String someone) {
                name = someone;
                System.out.println("Hello " + name);
            }
        }
      
        HelloWorld englishGreeting = new EnglishGreeting();
        
        HelloWorld frenchGreeting = new HelloWorld() {
            String name = "tout le monde";
            public void greet() {
                greetSomeone("tout le monde");
            }
            public void greetSomeone(String someone) {
                name = someone;
                System.out.println("Salut " + name);
            }
        };
        
        HelloWorld spanishGreeting = new HelloWorld() {
            String name = "mundo";
            public void greet() {
                greetSomeone("mundo");
            }
            public void greetSomeone(String someone) {
                name = someone;
                System.out.println("Hola, " + name);
            }
        };
        englishGreeting.greet();
        frenchGreeting.greetSomeone("Fred");
        spanishGreeting.greet();
    }

    public static void main(String... args) {
        HelloWorldAnonymousClasses myApp =
            new HelloWorldAnonymousClasses();
        myApp.sayHello();
    }            
}

In the example above, HelloWorldAnonymousClasses uses anonymous classes in the initialization statements of the local variables frenchGreeting and spanishGreeting, but uses a local class for the initialization of the variable englishGreeting.

Syntax
Consider this code block:

        HelloWorld frenchGreeting = new HelloWorld() {
            String name = "tout le monde";
            public void greet() {
                greetSomeone("tout le monde");
            }
            public void greetSomeone(String someone) {
                name = someone;
                System.out.println("Salut " + name);
            }
        };

The anonymous class expression consists of the following:

The new operator
The name of an interface to implement or a class to extend. In this example, the anonymous class is implementing the interface HelloWorld.
Parentheses that contain the arguments to a constructor, just like a normal class instance creation expression. Note: When you implement an interface, there is no constructor, so you use an empty pair of parentheses, as in this example.
A body, which is a class declaration body. More specifically, in the body, method declarations are allowed but statements are not.

Anonymous Classes in Java#

Anonymous Classes in Java