CODEWITHSUNDEEP
oopdesign-patterns
King Popsicle
King Popsicle

Reputation: 465

Design pattern for child calling method in parent

I am currently working on my biggest project and I am having trouble figuring out how to structure my code. I'm looking for some guidance.

I have 2 objects a Tile and Container. Each Tile has a 2D coordinate and are all children of the Container. The Container has methods that return tile for location, switch tiles, add tiles, and remove tiles.

Now when you click on a tile it disappears, that was easy because it was self contained. The problem comes when I created different types of tiles that inherit from the base Tile. Each different type of tile does a different action when you click on it. Some destroy surrounding tiles some switch with other tiles and others add new tiles. For simplicity we will call these 3 subclasses Tile-destroy, Tile-swap, and Tile-add.

My problem is when I click on these tiles how can they act on other tiles in the Container. Should I just call functions in the parent class or is there a better way to do this? I am having trouble #including the Tile in the Container as well as the other way around. I feel like its not a proper pattern.

I have it set up so when a click takes place the Container handles it and checks the type of tile that is clicked and acts from there with a large else-if statement however this makes it very difficult to add new tile types. Ideally all the information for what happens when you click on a tile is contained within each tile subclass.

Any ideas?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 543

Answers (1)

Dzianis Yafimau
Dzianis Yafimau

Reputation: 2016

I can suggest you the simpliest design:

  1. Your Container will be a game controller
  2. Each tile has Parent property which is refer to Container
  3. When you click on tile it sends Command to Container (for example, DestroyTile(x, y) or AddTile(x, y)
  4. Container handle this commands and destroys, adds or swap tiles.

If you want really good and more decoupled design you can also create handlers for all operation types DestroyTileHandler, AddTileHandler. In Container on different commands you will just pass them [commands] to appropriate handler. Also you need to pass context object (like Field with tiles) to handler. This allows you to add and modify new operations without even changing Container code.

See related patterns: Command, Observer

Feel free to ask questions and good luck!

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions