Fields in interfaces

Question

I have a basic question in Java, but it's a general question in OOP. Why do interfaces allow fields to be set? Doesn't that run contrary to what an interface is supposed to do?

The way I made sense of it, an interface is what in English would be an adjective. So, if my class implements the interfaces Runnable and Serializable, I'm ensuring the user that my class will satisfy the conditions to be Runnable and Seriablizable. However, that would mean interfaces are "stateless", but they are allowed to have fields in Java...

Am I missing something?

Answer 1

What if that interface refers to constants? Wouldn't it be natural to declare them in the interface?

interface IdFinder {
    Serializable UNSAVED = new Serializable() {};

    /** @returns the given entity's persistent identity, 
                 or {@link UNSAVED} if it hasn't been saved yet, 
                 or null if o is a value object that hasn't a 
                 persistent identity of its own.
     */
    Serializable getId(Object o);
}

Answer 2

All fields in interface are public static final, i.e. they are constants.

It is generally recommended to avoid such interfaces, but sometimes you can find an interface that has no methods and is used only to contain list of constant values.

Answer 3

Yes, you can have constant fields in interfaces, but you are right when you say that "it seems contrary to what an interface is supposed to do", as it is not a good practice. Why would you want to have all your classes that implement an interface with the same constants? You could simply have them in the class that uses them, or if you really need to export them somehow, have them in a separate class utiliy like this:

public class Constants {
    private Constants() { }

    public static final int ZERO = 0;
    public static final int SOME_COMPLEX_NUM = 2124132L;
    ...
}

You also have enums, if you need to represent a set of constant fields with some meaning. I do not see any "use case" where you would actually need constants in an interface. But could be wrong :)

Answer 4

First of all, there's difference between OOP paradigm and OOP implementation in Java, so same words may mean a bit different things.

In OOP the paradigm interface is what you can do with the object (or what object can do for you). Any object can have several interfaces and thus play different roles. For example, someone may work as a programmer and be able to create programs, but at the same time he may be a husband and father and thus be able to pay the bills for his family and take care of children. Here "programmer", "husband" and "father" are interfaces, and a person is an object that implements them. Note, that interfaces do not imply presence of any specific features (fields) for implementing object, just actions that this object should be able to perform.

Java more or less follows this idea, but as any paradigm implementation has its own features. Java allows describing methods, that is actions that the implementing object should be able to perform, but not any implementation details, thus, nothing about object fields or private methods.

But what about constants (public final static fields)? Are they part of implementation or interface. It could be both. E.g. interface "programmer" can have constant WORK_HOURS set to "8". Thus Java allows you to describe constants in interfaces too.

Note, that Java only helps you to make good OOP design, but it doesn't strongly require it. In particular, not all public methods of an object should exist in interface too. For example, getter and setter methods are normally public, but in fact they are the part of implementation, not interface, and thus it's worth not to bring them into interface.

(Please also note, that most things I described here are about mainstream OOP like in Java, but there are also other kinds of OOP such as prototype-based one, in particular implemented in JavaScript).