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Adapters

Selena Sol

The final option for handling events is the adapter model. Adapters are used in conjunction with the listener model.
In the listener discussion, you saw how you can implement an interface and then tell an object you're interested in being notified when events occur. The adapter model uses a different tactic. Instead of implementing the listener interface in the class that receives the events, we create another object to listen for the events. This object serves as a middleman between the component that generates the event and the component that receives the event.
The JDK contains a predefined set of adapter classes that you can extend from. In fact, there is one for each different type of event listener. For example, there is a ActionAdapter for the ActionListener interface.
What exactly is an adapter class? An adapter class is a class that implements its corresponding interface. For example, the ActionAdapter class is essentially the following:
```
public abstract class ActionAdapter 
       implements ActionListener
{
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event)
    {
    }
}
```
Adapters don't do anything on their own. In fact, they are declared abstract so you can't instantiate them. This is because adapter classes only exist as a convenience.
Suppose you wanted to listen for mouse events, but only for mouse up and mouse-down events. It's tedious to implement the entire interface for mouse events (MouseListener) since it contains five methods and you're only interested in two of them. An adapter class provides an empty implementation for all the methods. You can subclass an adapter class--in this case MouseAdapter--and only implement the two methods that you're interested in.
In order to use adapters, you must subclass them to provide any useful functionality. To use an adapter, you subclass it, create an object of that subclass, and register it as a listener for events.