Implementing Cloneable interface

In this example we shall show you how to implement the Cloneable interface. A class implements the Cloneable interface to indicate to the Object.clone() method that it is legal for that method to make a field-for-field copy of instances of that class. To implement the Cloneable interface we have performed the following steps:

• We have created a class, Employee that implements the Cloneable interface and in its overriden clone() method it calls the super class clone() method and throws a CloneNotSupportedException, in case the object should not be cloned.
• We create a new Employee object and print out its fields’ values.

Then we get a clone object of the object and print out its fields’ values, that are equal to the original object’s fields’ values,

as described in the code snippet below.

package com.javacodegeeks.snippets.core;


public class ClonableClass {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

  try {


Employee e1 = new Employee("Dolly", 1000);


System.out.println(e1);


System.out.println("The employee's name is " + e1.getN());


System.out.println("The employees's pay is " + e1.getP());



Employee e1Clone = (Employee) e1.clone();


System.out.println(e1Clone);


System.out.println("The clone's name is " + e1Clone.getN());


System.out.println("The clones's pay is " + e1Clone.getP());


  } catch (CloneNotSupportedException cnse) {


System.out.println("Clone not supported");

  }
    }
}

class Employee implements Cloneable {

    String n;
    int pay;

    public Employee(String name, int salary) {

  this.n = name;

  this.pay = salary;
    }

    public Employee() {
    }

    public String getN() {

  return n;
    }

    public void setN(String name) {

  this.n = name;
    }

    public void setP(int pay) {

  this.pay = pay;
    }

    public int getP() {

  return this.pay;
    }

    @Override
    public Object clone() throws CloneNotSupportedException {

  try {


return super.clone();

  } catch (CloneNotSupportedException cnse) {


System.out.println("CloneNotSupportedException thrown " + cnse);


throw new CloneNotSupportedException();

  }
    }
}

Output:

methodoverloading.Employee@e9f784d
The employee's name is Dolly
The employees's pay is 1000
methodoverloading.Employee@7930ebb
The clone's name is Dolly
The clones's pay is 1000

  
This was an example of how to implement the Cloneable interface in Java.