How to refactor these two nearly idential classes?

I have two classes with a lot of identical code. One class extends JLabel and the other class extends JTextField.

Normally I'd push the identical code up to a superclass. However in this case I can't do that because I don't control those classes.

Is there an alternative way to properly refactor out the duplicate code here?

ViewLabel

package Screen;

import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.event.FocusEvent;
import java.awt.event.FocusListener;

import javax.swing.BorderFactory;
import javax.swing.JLabel;
import javax.swing.border.Border;


public class ViewLabel extends JLabel implements FocusListener {

	private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

	//CONSTRUCTOR
	public ViewLabel() {
		this("                       ");
	}
	public ViewLabel(String s) {
		super(s);
		this.setBorder(null);
		this.setOpaque(true);
		this.setForeground(Color.BLACK);
		this.setBackground(Color.WHITE);
		Border border = BorderFactory.createLineBorder(Color.BLUE, 5);
		this.setBorder(border);
		//this.setBorder(null);  //DWD set border for testing on/off
		this.addFocusListener(this);
	}

	public void setFieldHighlighting(Color foreground, Color background) {
		this.setForeground(foreground);
		this.setBackground(background);		
	}
	public void highlightField() {
        setFieldHighlighting(Color.WHITE, Color.BLACK);		
	}
	public void unhighlightField() {
		setFieldHighlighting(Color.BLACK, Color.WHITE);
	}


	@Override
	public void focusGained(FocusEvent e) {
        highlightField();
	}

	@Override
	public void focusLost(FocusEvent e) {
		if (!e.isTemporary()) {       //a temporary loss is when we change windows, in which case we don't want to unhighlight the line.
            unhighlightField();
		}
	}

}

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VIewTextField

package Screen;

import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.event.FocusEvent;
import java.awt.event.FocusListener;

import javax.swing.BorderFactory;
import javax.swing.JTextField;
import javax.swing.border.Border;


public class ViewTextField extends JTextField implements FocusListener {

	private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
	
	//CONSTRUCTOR
	public ViewTextField() {
		this("                       ");
	}
	public ViewTextField(String s) {
		super(s);
		this.setBorder(null);
		this.setOpaque(true);
		this.setForeground(Color.BLACK);
		this.setBackground(Color.WHITE);
		Border border = BorderFactory.createLineBorder(Color.BLUE, 5);
		this.setBorder(border);
		//this.setBorder(null);  //DWD set border for testing on/off
		this.addFocusListener(this);
	}

	public void setFieldHighlighting(Color foreground, Color background) {
		this.setForeground(foreground);
		this.setBackground(background);		
	}
	public void highlightField() {
        setFieldHighlighting(Color.WHITE, Color.BLACK);		
	}
	public void unhighlightField() {
		setFieldHighlighting(Color.BLACK, Color.WHITE);
	}


	@Override
	public void focusGained(FocusEvent e) {
        highlightField();
	}

	@Override
	public void focusLost(FocusEvent e) {
		if (!e.isTemporary()) {       //a temporary loss is when we change windows, in which case we don't want to unhighlight the line.
            unhighlightField();
		}
	}
	
}

Open in new window

public class SharedView { public static void init(JComponent component) { component.setBorder(null); component.setOpaque(true); component.setForeground(Color.BLACK); component.setBackground(Color.WHITE); Border border = BorderFactory.createLineBorder(Color.BLUE, 5); component.setBorder(border); } public static void setFieldHighlighting(JComponent component, Color foreground, Color background) { component.setForeground(foreground); component.setBackground(background); } ... }

public ViewTextField(String s) { super(s); SharedView.init(this) ; this.addFocusListener(this) ; } public void setFieldHighlighting(Color foreground, Color background) { SharedView.setFieldHighlighting(this, foreground, background) ; } etc.

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LVL 28

dpearsonCommented: 2016-01-02

There's not a ton you can do when you don't control the classes.

But in this case many of the methods you're calling are implemented on JComponent so you could establish a shared class like this:

And then call to them explicitly:

That's at least better than 2 copies of the same code from a maintenance standpoint.

If you don't like that, another approach is to modify your original design.

Instead of deriving from JLabel and JTextField you could have your classes contain instances of those classes and have a JComponent getComponent() method which returns the specific instance (JLabel or JTextField as necessary).

Then you could have your classes share a new parent class with your current methods implemented in it - except when you need to call setBackground(..) you'd call getComponent().setBackground(). Similar result - you can rewrite some of the code so it's shared, because now you are back in control of the class hierarchy.

Whether that's an option or not depends on whether you're OK with modifying your class design.

(If this isn't clear and you'd prefer to go this way let me know and I can explain a bit more).

Doug

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How to refactor these two nearly idential classes?

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