Effective Java

by Joshua Bloch

Writing a skeletal implementation is a relatively simple, if somewhat tedious, process. First, study the interface and decide which methods are the primitives in terms of which the others can be implemented. These primitives will be the abstract methods in your skeletal implementation. Next, provide default methods in the interface for all of the methods that can be implemented directly atop the primitives, but recall that you may not provide default methods for Object methods such as equals and hashCode. If the primitives and default methods cover the interface, you’re done, and have no need for a skeletal implementation class. Otherwise, write a class declared to implement the interface, with implementations of all of the remaining interface methods. The class may contain any nonpublic fields ands methods appropriate to the task.