22.6. Exercises: Interfaces and Polymorphism

As a new C# coder, it might take you some time to recognize when to use interfaces.

To help overcome this, let’s consider a common occurrence—sorting a List of objects.

1. If the list contains string or numerical entries, then sorting the list is trivial:

   listName.Sort();
   

2. However, if the elements are custom objects (like Cat), then sorting the list becomes more complicated. This is because the objects may contain multiple fields, any of which could be used as a sorting option. For Cat objects, this could include name, age, or mass.

22.6.1. Getting Started

Fork and clone the starter code and open up Visual Studio to get started!

You will practice implementing interfaces by playing around with a small ice cream store. It consists of a refrigerated display Case, which contains a collection of ice cream Flavor objects and a selection of Cone objects.

Tip

Did you notice the abstract Ingredient class? This gets extended by Flavor and Cone to help streamline the code.

22.6.2. Sorting Flavors by Name

To display a menu for your customers, you need to sort the ice cream flavors alphabetically by the name field. Fortunately, the IComparer interface helps you solve the sorting-objects-by-field problem.

Tip

Before proceeding, make sure you have read the section on the IComparer interface!

22.6.2.1. Create a Sorting Class

1. Create a new class called FlavorComparer and have it implement the IComparer interface:

   public class FlavorComparer : IComparer<Flavor>
   

2. Notice that Visual Studio flags a couple of errors that you need to fix:

   1. Add the namespace System.Collections.Generic.

3. To start sorting, we need a Compare() method. Add the following code to create one:

   public int Compare(Flavor x, Flavor y)
   {
      return string.Compare(x.Name, y.Name);
   }
   

   This returns an integer (-1, 1, or 0) depending on which Flavor object x or y comes first, alphabetically.

22.6.2.2. Sorting the Flavors List

In the Main method in Program.cs, we declare menu that contains everything in the Case as well as specific availableFlavors and availableCones collections.

Case menu = new Case();
List<Flavor> availableFlavors = menu.Flavors;
List<Cone> availableCones = menu.Cones;

1. To sort the availableFlavors list, first create a new FlavorComparer object.

   FlavorComparer comparer = new FlavorComparer();
   

2. Next, call the Sort method on availableFlavors and pass the comparer object as the argument.

   availableFlavors.Sort(comparer);
   

3. Iterating through the availableFlavors list with a loop before and after the sort shows the results. (The output below displays just the name fields).

   Before:                 After:
   
   Vanilla                 Chocolate
   Chocolate               Red Velvet
   Red Velvet              Rocky Road
   Rocky Road              Strawberry Sorbet
   Strawberry Sorbet       Vanilla
   

Tip

Instead of declaring and initializing the comparer object, we could combine steps 1 and 2 by using a single statement:

availableFlavors.Sort(new FlavorComparer());

22.6.3. Sorting Cones by Cost

Now let’s sort our availableCones list by cost, from least expensive to most expensive.

1. Create the new class ConeComparer.

2. Follow the example above to implement the IComparer interface and evaluate Cone objects by cost. Since comparing two numbers is different from comparing strings, try getting the difference between the two numbers. If the difference is positive, then we know the first number is greater. If the difference is negative, then we know that the second number is greater.

3. In the Main() method, sort the availableCones list, then print the elements to the screen to verify the results.

   Before:           After:
   
   Waffle: $1.25        Bowl: $0.05
   Sugar: $0.75         Wafer: $0.50
   Wafer: $0.50         Sugar: $0.75
   Bowl: $0.05          Waffle: $1.25
   

Tip

Remember that the cost field is of type double and Compare() has a return type of type int!

22.6.4. Bonus Mission

Modify FlavorComparer to sort Flavor objects by the number of allergens, from lowest to highest.

22.6.5. Next Steps

In these exercises, you practiced implementing existing interfaces. In the studio activity, you will design and implement your own.