As several people have probably already answered, interfaces can be used to enforce certain behaviors between classes that will not implement those behaviors the same way. So by implementing an interface you are saying that your class has the behavior of the interface. The IAnimal interface would not be a typical interface because Dog, Cat, Bird, etc. classes are types of animals, and should probably extend it, which is a case of inheritance. Instead, an interface would be more like animal behavior in this case, such as IRunnable, IFlyable, ITrainable, etc.

接口有很多好处，其中一个关键就是可插拔性。例如，声明一个具有List参数的方法将允许传入实现List接口的任何东西，允许开发人员在以后删除和插入不同的列表，而不必重写大量代码。

您可能永远不会使用接口，但如果您正在从头开始设计一个项目，特别是某种类型的框架，您可能会想要熟悉它们。

我建议大家阅读Coad、Mayfield和Kern撰写的《Java设计》中关于接口的章节。它们比一般的介绍性文本解释得好一点。如果你不使用Java，你可以只阅读本章的开头，主要是一些概念。

把接口想象成一个契约。这是一种说法，“这些类应该遵循这些规则。”

所以在IAnimal的例子中，它是一种说，“我必须能够在实现IAnimal的类上调用Run, Walk等。”

为什么这个有用?您可能希望构建一个函数，该函数依赖于必须能够在对象上调用Run和Walk这一事实。你可以有以下内容:

public void RunThenWalk(Monkey m) {
    m.Run();
    m.Walk();
}

public void RunThenWalk(Dog d) {
    d.Run();
    d.Walk();
}

．.． 对所有你知道能跑能走的物体重复这一步骤。然而，在你的IAnimal接口中，你可以像下面这样定义函数:

public void RunThenWalk(IAnimal a) {
    a.Run();
    a.Walk();
}

通过根据接口编程，您实际上是信任类来实现接口的目的。所以在我们的例子中，想法是“我不在乎他们怎么跑和走，只要他们能跑和走。”只要他们履行协议，我的RunThenWalk就有效。它在不了解任何其他课程的情况下运行得很好。”

在这个相关的问题上也有很好的讨论。

如果浏览. net Framework程序集并深入到任何标准对象的基类中，您将注意到许多接口(名为ISomeName的成员)。

Interfaces are basically for implementing frameworks, large or small. I felt the same way about interfaces until I wanted to write a framework of my own. I also found that understanding interfaces helped me learn frameworks much more rapidly. The moment that you want to write a more elegant solution for just about anything, you will find that an interface makes a lot of sense. It's like a method of letting a class put on the appropriate clothes for the job. More importantly, interfaces allow systems to become much more self-documenting, because complex objects become less complex when the class implements interfaces, which helps to categorize its functionality.

类在希望能够显式或隐式地参与框架时实现接口。例如，IDisposable是一个公共接口，它为流行且有用的Dispose()方法提供方法签名。在框架中，您或其他开发人员需要知道的关于类的所有信息是，如果它实现了IDisposable，那么您就知道((IDisposable)myObject). dispose()可用于清理目的。

经典示例:在没有实现IDisposable接口的情况下，你不能在c#中使用"using()"关键字构造，因为它要求任何指定为参数的对象都可以隐式转换为IDisposable。

复杂的例子: 一个更复杂的例子是System.ComponentModel.Component类。这个类同时实现了IDisposable和IComponent。大多数(如果不是全部的话)具有与之关联的可视化设计器的. net对象实现了IComponent，以便IDE能够与组件交互。

CONCLUSION: As you become more familiar with the .NET Framework, the first thing you will do when encountering a new class in the Object Browser or within the .NET Reflector (free) tool (http://www.red-gate.com/products/reflector/) is to check to see which class it inherits from and also the interfaces that it implements. .NET Reflector is even better than the Object Browser because it lets you see the Derived classes as well. That allows you to learn about all objects that derive from a particular class, thereby potentially learning about framework functionality that you did not know existed. This is particularly significant when updated or new namespaces are added to the .NET Framework.

当您成为库开发人员(为其他编码员编写代码的人)时，接口将变得很明显。我们中的大多数人都是从应用程序开发人员开始的，我们使用现有的api和编程库。

同样的，接口是一种契约，还没有人提到接口是一种使代码的某些部分稳定的好方法。当它是一个团队项目时(或者当您正在开发其他开发人员使用的代码时)，这尤其有用。所以，这里有一个具体的场景:

当您在团队中开发代码时，其他人可能会使用您编写的代码。当他们为你的(稳定的)接口编写代码时，他们会非常高兴，而当你可以自由地改变你的实现(隐藏在接口后面)而不破坏你团队的代码时，你也会非常高兴。它是信息隐藏的一种变体(接口是公开的，实现对客户端程序员隐藏)。阅读更多关于受保护的变种。

另请参阅有关接口编码的相关问题。

最简单的例子就是支付处理器。(Paypal, PDS等)。

假设您创建了一个具有ProcessACH和ProcessCreditCard方法的接口IPaymentProcessor。

现在可以实现一个具体的Paypal实现。让这些方法调用PayPal特定的函数。

如果你决定以后需要换到另一个提供商，你可以这样做。只需为新提供程序创建另一个具体实现。由于您所绑定的只是您的接口(契约)，因此您可以在不更改使用它的代码的情况下切换应用程序使用的接口。

I like Jimmy's answer a lot, but I feel I need to add something to it. The key to the whole thing is the "able" in IProcessable . It indicates a capability (or property, but meaning "intrinsic quality", not in the sense of C# properties) of the object that implements the interface. IAnimal is probably not a good example for an interface, but IWalkable might be a good interface to have if your system has many things that can walk. You might have classes derived from Animal such as Dog, Cow, Fish, Snake. The first two would probably implement IWalkable, the latter two don't walk, so they wouldn't. Now you ask "why not just have another superclass, WalkingAnimal, that Dog and Cow derive from?". The answer is when you have something completely outside the inheritance tree that also can walk, such as a robot. Robot would implement IWalkable, but probably wouldn't derive from Animal. If you want a list of things that can walk, you type it as IWalkable and you can put all walking animals plus robots in the list.

现在，将IWalkable替换为IPersistable这样更像软件的东西，这样的类比就更接近你在实际程序中看到的情况了。