Why would I want to use Interfaces? [closed]

I understand that they force you to implement methods and such but what I cant understand is why you would want to use them. Can anybody give me a good example or explanation on why I would want to implement this.

Solution 1:

One specific example: interfaces are a good way of specifying a contract that other people's code must meet.

If I'm writing a library of code, I may write code that is valid for objects that have a certain set of behaviours. The best solution is to specify those behaviours in an interface (no implementation, just a description) and then use references to objects implementing that interface in my library code.

Then any random person can come along, create a class that implements that interface, instantiate an object of that class and pass it to my library code and expect it to work. Note: it is of course possible to strictly implement an interface while ignoring the intention of the interface, so merely implementing an interface is no guarantee that things will work. Stupid always finds a way! :-)

Another specific example: two teams working on different components that must co-operate. If the two teams sit down on day 1 and agree on a set of interfaces, then they can go their separate ways and implement their components around those interfaces. Team A can build test harnesses that simulate the component from Team B for testing, and vice versa. Parallel development, and fewer bugs.

The key point is that interfaces provide a layer of abstraction so that you can write code that is ignorant of unnecessary details.

The canonical example used in most textbooks is that of sorting routines. You can sort any class of objects so long as you have a way of comparing any two of the objects. You can make any class sortable therefore by implementing the IComparable interface, which forces you to implement a method for comparing two instances. All of the sort routines are written to handle references to IComparable objects, so as soon as you implement IComparable you can use any of those sort routines on collections of objects of your class.

Solution 2:

One typical example is a plugin architecture. Developer A writes the main app, and wants to make certain that all plugins written by developer B, C and D conform to what his app expects of them.

Solution 3:

Interfaces define contracts, and that's the key word.

You use an interface when you need to define a contract in your program but you don't really care about the rest of the properties of the class that fulfills that contract as long as it does.

So, let's see an example. Suppose you have a method which provides the functionality to sort a list. First thing .. what's a list? Do you really care what elements does it holds in order to sort the list? Your answer should be no... In .NET (for example) you have an interface called IList which defines the operations that a list MUST support so you don't care the actual details underneath the surface.

Back to the example, you don't really know the class of the objects in the list... neither you care. If you can just compare the object you might as well sort them. So you declare a contract:

interface IComparable
{
  // Return -1 if this is less than CompareWith
  // Return 0 if object are equal
  // Return 1 if CompareWith is less than this
  int Compare(object CompareWith);
}

that contract specify that a method which accepts an object and returns an int must be implemented in order to be comparable. Now you have defined an contract and for now on you don't care about the object itself but about the contract so you can just do:

IComparable comp1 = list.GetItem(i) as IComparable;

if (comp1.Compare(list.GetItem(i+1)) < 0)
  swapItem(list,i, i+1)

PS: I know the examples are a bit naive but they are examples ...

Solution 4:

The easiest way of understanding interfaces is that they allow different objects to expose COMMON functionality. This allows the programmer to write much simplier, shorter code that programs to an interface, then as long as the objects implement that interface it will work.

Example 1: There are many different database providers, MySQL, MSSQL, Oracle, etc. However all database objects can DO the same things so you will find many interfaces for database objects. If an object implements IDBConnection then it exposes the methods Open() and Close(). So if I want my program to be database provider agnostic, I program to the interface and not to the specific providers.

IDbConnection connection = GetDatabaseConnectionFromConfig()
connection.Open()
// do stuff
connection.Close()

See by programming to an interface (IDbconnection) I can now SWAP out any data provider in my config but my code stays the exact same. This flexibility can be extremely useful and easy to maintain. The downside to this is that I can only perform 'generic' database operations and may not fully utilize the strength that each particular provider offers so as with everything in programming you have a trade off and you must determine which scenario will benefit you the most.

Example 2: If you notice almost all collections implement this interface called IEnumerable. IEnumerable returns an IEnumerator which has MoveNext(), Current, and Reset(). This allows C# to easily move through your collection. The reason it can do this is since it exposes the IEnumerable interface it KNOWS that the object exposes the methods it needs to go through it. This does two things. 1) foreach loops will now know how to enumerate the collection and 2) you can now apply powerful LINQ exprssions to your collection. Again the reason why interfaces are so useful here is because all collections have something in COMMON, they can be moved through. Each collection may be moved through a different way (linked list vs array) but that is the beauty of interfaces is that the implementation is hidden and irrelevant to the consumer of the interface. MoveNext() gives you the next item in the collection, it doesn't matter HOW it does it. Pretty nice, huh?

Example 3: When you are designing your own interfaces you just have to ask yourself one question. What do these things have in common? Once you find all the things that the objects share, you abstract those properties/methods into an interface so that each object can inherit from it. Then you can program against several objects using one interface.

And of course I have to give my favorite C++ polymorphic example, the animals example. All animals share certain characteristics. Lets say they can Move, Speak, and they all have a Name. Since I just identified what all my animals have in common and I can abstract those qualities into the IAnimal interface. Then I create a Bear object, an Owl object, and a Snake object all implementing this interface. The reason why you can store different objects together that implement the same interface is because interfaces represent an IS-A replationship. A bear IS-A animal, an owl IS-A animal, so it makes since that I can collect them all as Animals.

var animals = new IAnimal[] = {new Bear(), new Owl(), new Snake()} // here I can collect different objects in a single collection because they inherit from the same interface

foreach (IAnimal animal in animals) 
{
    Console.WriteLine(animal.Name)
    animal.Speak() // a bear growls, a owl hoots, and a snake hisses
    animal.Move() // bear runs, owl flys, snake slithers
}

You can see that even though these animals perform each action in a different way, I can program against them all in one unified model and this is just one of the many benefits of Interfaces.

So again the most important thing with interfaces is what do objects have in common so that you can program against DIFFERENT objects in the SAME way. Saves time, creates more flexible applications, hides complexity/implementation, models real-world objects / situations, among many other benefits.

Hope this helps.