Inheritance and Method overloading - Object Oriented Programming

_I_nheritance is a usual theme in Object Oriented Programming. Because of Inheritance, the functions/methods defined in parent classes can be called in Child classes which enables code reuse, and several other features. In this article, we try to understand some of those features that come up with Inheritance.

We've discussed Abstract Methods in an earlier post, which is a feature part of Inheritance, and can be applied on child classes that inherits from a Parent class.

E the methods which are inherited can also be seen as another feature or possibility in Inheritance. In many cases, it's required to override or specialize the methods inherited from the Parent class. This is of course possible, and is called as 'Method Overloading'.

Consider the two classes and its methods defined below:

Example 0:

[code language="python"] import abc

class MyClass(object):

__metaclass__ = abc.ABCMeta

def __init__(self): pass

def my_set_method(self, value): self.value = value

def my_get_method(self): return self.value

@abc.abstractmethod def printdoc(self): return

class MyChildClass(MyClass):

def my_set_method(self, value): if not isinstance(value, int): value = 0 super(MyChildClass, self).my_set_method(self)

def printdoc(self): print("\nDocumentation for MyChildClass()")

instance_1 = MyChildClass() instance_1.my_set_method(10) print(instance_1.my_get_method()) instance_1.printdoc() [/code]

We have two classes, the parent class being MyClass and the child class being MyChildClass.

MyClass has three methods defined.

• my_set_method()
• my_get_method()
• printdoc()

The printdoc() method is an  Abstract method, and hence should be implemented in the Child class as a mandatory method.

The child class MyChildClass inherits from MyClass and has access to all it's methods.

Normally, we can just go ahead and use the methods defined in MyClass , in MyChildClass. But there can be situations when we want to improve or build upon the methods inherited. As said earlier, this is called Method Overloading.

MyChildClass extends the parent's my_set_method() function by it's own implementation. In this example, it does an additional check to understand if the input value is an int or not, and then calls the my_set_method() of it's parent class using super. Hence, this method in the child class extends the functionality prior calling method in the parent. A post on super is set for a later time.

Even though this is a trivial example, it helps to understand how the features inherited from other classes can be extended or improved upon via method overloading.

The my_get_method() is not overridden in the child class but still called from the instance, as instance_1.my_get_method(). We're using it as it is available via Inheritance. Since it's defined in the parent class, it works in the child class' instance when called, even if not overridden.

The printdoc() method is an abstract method and hence is mandatory to be implemented in the child class, and can be overridden with what we choose to do.

Inheritance is possible from python builtins, and can be overridden as well. Let's check out another example:

Example 1:

[code language="python"] class MyList(list):

def __getitem__(self, index): if index == 0: raise IndexError if index > 0: index -= 1 return list.__getitem__(self, index)

def __setitem__(self, index, value): if index == 0: raise IndexError if index > 0: index -= 1 list.__setitem__(self, index, value)

x = MyList(['a', 'b', 'c']) print(x) print("-" * 10)

x.append('d') print(x) print("-" * 10)

x.__setitem__(4, 'e') print(x) print("-" * 10)

print(x[1]) print(x.__getitem__(1)) print("-" * 10)

print(x[4]) print(x.__getitem__(4)) [/code] This outputs:

[code language="python"] ['a', 'b', 'c'] ---------- ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd'] ---------- ['a', 'b', 'c', 'e'] ---------- a a ---------- e e [/code]

How does the code work?

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The class MyList() inherits from the builtin list. Because of the inheritance, we can use list's available magic methods such as __getitem__() , __setitem__() etc..

NOTE: In order to see the available methods in list, use dir(list).

1. We create two functions/methods named `__getitem__()` and `__setitem__()` to override the inherited methods.
2. Within these functions/methods, we set our own conditions.
3. Wie later call the builtin methods directly within these functions, using
   1. list.__getitem__()
   2. list.__setitem__()
4. We create an instance named x from MyList().
5. We understand that
   1. x[1] and x.__getitem__(1) are same.
   2. x[4, 'e'] and x.__setitem__(4, 'e') are same.
   3. x.append(f) is same as x.__setitem__(<n>, f) where is the element to the extreme right which the python interpreter iterates and find on its own.

Hence, in Inheritance, child classes can:

• Inherit from parent classes and use those methods.
  • Parent classes can either be user-defined classes or buitins like list , dict etc..
• Override (or Overload) an inherited method.
• Extend an inherited method in its own way.
• Implement an Abstract method the parent class requires.

Reference:

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1. Python beyond the basics - Object Oriented Programming