The use of "this" in AdMob Custom Event Class

[Stephen Wong]

I'm study this article (https://developers.google.com/mobile-ads-sdk/training/mediation/custom-events/banners), and found out "this" is used. Below is a quick summary of the codes:

public class CustomAd implements CustomEventBanner, AdListener {
  private CustomEventBannerListener bannerListener;
  private AdView adView;

  @Override
  public void requestBannerAd(final CustomEventBannerListener listener,
                              final Activity activity,
                              String label,
                              String serverParameter,
                              AdSize adSize,
                              MediationAdRequest mediationAdRequest,
                              Object extra) {


    this.bannerListener = listener;
    this.adView = new AdView(activity, bestAdSize, serverParameter);
    this.adView.setAdListener(this);
    AdRequest adRequest = new AdRequest();
    this.adView.loadAd(adRequest);
  }
}

Here, we can see that the field "adView" is created under the class "CustomAd". In order to reference it, we've used "this.adView". However, I found that even I don't use "this" (so it will be "adView" instead of "this.adView"), everything goes fine without any error.

So what is the purpose of using "this" here?

Thanks.

[Eric Leichtenschlag]

Hi Stephen,

The "this" keyword is optional in this case. People tend to have different thoughts about the use of optional "this", but in this case the code works with or without it.

Thanks,

Eric