Java Polymorphism And equals()

Let’s start by having a small introduction. The mother of all Java classes – Object – does define a equals() method, which is meant to return true if the passed instance is equal to the current instance. The default implementation is limited to comparing references. So it will only return true when the current and the passed object are the same. The equals() method is meant to be overridden by extending classes with meaningful logic. The implementation has to obey some requirements (from javadoc on Object.equals()):

The equals() method guarantees that…

• It is reflexive: for any non-null reference value x, x.equals(x) should return true.
• It is symmetric: for any non-null reference values x and y, x.equals(y) should return true if and only if y.equals(x) returns true.
• It is transitive: for any non-null reference values x, y, and z, if x.equals(y) returns true and y.equals(z) returns true, then x.equals(z) should return true.
• It is consistent: for any non-null reference values x and y, multiple invocations of x.equals(y) consistently return true or consistently return false, provided no information used in equals comparisons on the objects is modified.
• For any non-null reference value x, x.equals(null) should return false.

Quite a bunch. Luckily those requirements are often easy to achieve. Let’s create a simple class and equip it with a equals() method.

A Drink

public class Drink {
  private final int size;

  public Drink(final int size) {
    this.size = size;
  }

  @Override
  public boolean equals(final Object obj) {
    if (!(obj instanceof Drink)) return false;
    return equals((Drink) obj);
  }

  public boolean equals(final Drink other) {
    return this.size == other.size;
  }
}

This equals() implementation obeys all the requirements above. And I added a convenience method with the exact type. Note that equals(Drink) does overload Object.equals(Object) but it does not override it! The difference between those two will be important later.

A Drink? A Coffee? A Coke?

Now let’s introduce polymorphism. We add two classes Coffee and Coke which extend the Drink class:

public class Coffee extends Drink {
  private final int coffeine;

  public Coffee(final int size, final int coffeine) {
    super(size);
    this.coffeine = coffeine;
  }

  @Override
  public boolean equals(final Object obj) {
    if (!(obj instanceof Coffee)) return false;
    return equals((Coffee) obj);
  }

  public boolean equals(final Coffee other) {
    if (!super.equals(other)) return false;
    return coffeine == other.coffeine;
  }
}

public class Coke extends Drink {
  private final int sugar;

  public Coke(final int size, final int sugar) {
    super(size);
    this.sugar = sugar;
  }

  @Override
  public boolean equals(final Object obj) {
    if (!(obj instanceof Coke)) return false;
    return equals((Coke) obj);
  }

  public boolean equals(final Coke other) {
    if (!super.equals(other)) return false;
    return sugar == other.sugar;
  }
}

The equals() methods are implemented here in a similar way. Everything looks fine, doesn’t it? Let’s see how the equals() methods behave:

final Drink drink = new Drink(15);
final Drink secondDrink = new Drink(15);

System.out.println("drink.equals(secondDrink): " + drink.equals(secondDrink));
System.out.println("secondDrink.equals(drink): " + secondDrink.equals(drink));

final Coffee coffee = new Coffee(15, 3);
final Coke coke = new Coke(15, 42);

System.out.println("coffee.equals(drink): " + coffee.equals(drink);
System.out.println("drink.equals(coffee): " + drink.equals(coffee));
System.out.println("coke.equals(coffee): " + coke.equals(coffee));

What’s the output? Your brain might tell you something like this:

drink.equals(secondDrink): true
secondDrink.equals(drink): true
coffee.equals(drink): false
drink.equals(coffee): false
coke.equals(coffee): false
But what’s the actual output? This:
drink.equals(secondDrink): true
secondDrink.equals(drink): true
coffee.equals(drink): true
drink.equals(coffee): true
coke.equals(coffee): true

Wow! What’s happening? drink.equals(coffee) is passed a parameter of type Coffee. The best method match for this type is Drink.equals(Drink). This method does only compare the size field. Since it’s equal it returns true. coffee.equals(drink) is passed a parameter of type Drink. The best method match for this type is…. Drink.equals(Drink)! Not Coffee.equals(Object)! So again only the size field is compared. The same goes for coke.equals(coffee): Drink.equals(Drink) is invoked.

First lesson: it’s a bad idea to implement convenience public equals() methods with different types than Object. Or in other words: do not overload equals(), override it.

Now let’s “fix” this problem by making the overloaded methods private. What will be the output this time? This:

drink.equals(secondDrink): true
secondDrink.equals(drink): true
coffee.equals(drink): false
drink.equals(coffee): true
coffee.equals(coke): false

Still not quite the output we’re expecting. What’s happening now? When coffee.equals(drink) is invoked, the Coffee.equals(Object) method is executed, Drink instance is checked against instanceof Coffee and this evaluates to false. But when we invoke drink.equals(coffee) the equals() implementation in Drink is executed and the passed instance is checked against instanceof Drink. Since Coffee is a extension of Drink, this evaluates to true.

Not all Drinks are Coffees

So is polymorphism broken in Java? Not quite. It seems like instanceof is not the check you should use per default in equals(). It’s sometimes important, we’ll see in a minute, but usually what you’d like to do is to use Object.getClass() and compare the class of the passed instance to the class of the current instance:

public class Drink {
  ...

  @Override
  public boolean equals(final Object obj) {
    if (obj == null) return false;
    if (this.getClass() != obj.getClass()) return false;
    return equals((Drink) obj);
  }

  private boolean equals(final Drink other) {
    return this.size == other.size;
  }
}

// changes in Coffee and Coke similar

As specified by documentation of getClass(), it is guaranteed to return the same Class instance for the same class. So it is save to use the == operator. Note that obj.getClass() is compared against this.getClass() and not against Drink.class! If we’d compare against the hard coded class super.equals() invocations from extending classes would always fail for non Drink instances.

Second lesson: use Object.getClass() in equals() if unsure. Only use instanceof if you know what you do. ;)

Instanceof

Now when would one want to use instanceof in equals() implementations? The semantics of equals() implementations are actually up to you (as long you follow the restrictions stated at the beginning). In my example above I wanted to have Drink!=Coffee!=Coke. But that’s just a definition thing. Sometimes you want to have a set of types behave like one type. The Java class library does this for lists and maps for example. A TreeMap and a HashMap are considered equal if they contain the same objects. Even though a TreeMap has an element order which a HashMap does not have. The types achieve this by having a AbstractMap class implement a equals() method which checks against instanceof Map and checks only Map properties. All extensions of AbstractMap do not override (and do not overload) equals().

One more thing

Don’t forget to implement hashCode() if you override equals(). Both methods have a tight relationship. Whenever a.equals(b) returns true, also a.hashCode() has to be equal to b.hashCode()!