Android @Override usage

Question

(Newbie to Java, old time C# guy.)

I have noticed a lot of the use of @Override in Android example code. I thought that all Java methods were by default "Virtual"?

What then does @Override do?

Example:

private class HelloWebViewClient extends WebViewClient {

    @Override
    public boolean shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView view, String url) {
        view.loadUrl(url);
        return true;
    }
}

Answer 1

It's an annotation that you can use to tell the compiler and your IDE that you intend the method that has that annotation to be an override of a super class method. They have warning/errors in case you make mistakes, for example if you intend to override a method but misspell it, if the annotation is there the IDE or the compiler will tell you that it is not in fact overriding the super class method and thus you can determine why and correct the misspelling.

This is all the more important for Android applications and activities for example, where all of the calls will be based on the activity lifecycle - and if you do not properly override the lifecycle methods they will never get called by the framework. Everything will compile fine, but your app will not work the way you intend it to. If you add the annotation, you'll get an error.