Cliser: The Java Client Hierarchy

The Cliser Client class serves as a superclass for TCPClient and UDPClient subclasses.

Because Client is a subclass of CommunicatorUser, a Client inherits its send() and receive() methods, allowing for convenient communication with a remote server. The remote host and remote port associated with the server are passed to the Client's constructor.

The Client class defines a handle for a Communicator which it then initializes via an abstract initCommunicator() method. The primary responsibility of the subclasses of Client is to define initCommunicator() to return an appropriate Communicator (i.e., ClientTCPCommunicator or ClientUDPCommunicator).

Given this hierarchy, once a user specifies the parameters for their client via a Cliser user-interface, the Cliser code generator can simply generate a new class that extends the particular class whose name corresponds to the parameters specified by the user.