Implementing Inheritance and Method Overriding

Tutorial 3 of 5

1. Introduction

Goal: The tutorial aims to guide you through the implementation of inheritance and method overriding in TypeScript. You will learn how to inherit properties and methods from a parent class and override these methods in a child class.

What You Will Learn: After completing this tutorial, you will be able to:
- Understand the concept of inheritance and method overriding.
- Implement inheritance in TypeScript.
- Override methods in a child class.

Prerequisites: Familiarity with TypeScript and basic programming concepts such as classes and methods.

2. Step-by-Step Guide

Inheritance is an important concept in object-oriented programming. It allows a class to inherit the properties and methods of another class. The class that is being inherited is called the parent class or superclass, and the class that inherits is called the child class or subclass.

Method Overriding is a feature that allows a child class to provide a different implementation of a method that is already provided by its parent class.

Let's dive into the implementation.

3. Code Examples

3.1 Example 1: Basic Inheritance

// Defining the parent class
class Animal {
    name: string;

    constructor(name: string) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    move(distance: number = 0) {
        console.log(`${this.name} moved ${distance}m.`);
    }
}

// Defining the child class
class Dog extends Animal {
    constructor(name: string) {
        super(name);
    }
}

let dog = new Dog("Tommy");
dog.move(10); // Output: Tommy moved 10m.

In this example, the Dog class is inheriting from the Animal class using the extends keyword. The Animal class has a method move which is accessible by the Dog class.

The super keyword is used to call the constructor of the parent class.

3.2 Example 2: Method Overriding

class Animal {
    name: string;

    constructor(name: string) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    move(distance: number = 0) {
        console.log(`${this.name} moved ${distance}m.`);
    }
}

class Dog extends Animal {
    constructor(name: string) {
        super(name);
    }

    move(distance = 5) {
        console.log("Running...");
        super.move(distance);
    }
}

let dog = new Dog("Tommy");
dog.move(); // Output: Running... Tommy moved 5m.

In this example, the Dog class overrides the move method of the Animal class. By calling super.move(distance), we can still access the parent class's move method.

4. Summary

  • We learned about inheritance and method overriding in TypeScript.
  • We understood how to inherit properties and methods from a parent class.
  • We saw how to override methods in a child class.
  • Remember, when overriding methods, the super keyword allows us to still access the parent's method.

Next Steps: Explore more about classes in TypeScript. You can start by learning about access modifiers, static properties, and getter and setter methods.

Additional Resources:
- TypeScript Official Documentation

5. Practice Exercises

  1. Create two classes, Person and Employee. The Person class should have properties name and age. The Employee class should inherit from Person and have an additional property salary. Override the toString method to display the employee's details.

  2. Create a Shape class with a method area that returns 0. Then, create Rectangle and Circle classes that inherit from Shape, and override the area method to calculate the area of each shape.

Solutions:

// Exercise 1
class Person {
    constructor(public name: string, public age: number) {}
}

class Employee extends Person {
    constructor(name: string, age: number, public salary: number) {
        super(name, age);
    }

    toString() {
        return `Name: ${this.name}, Age: ${this.age}, Salary: ${this.salary}`;
    }
}

let emp = new Employee("John", 25, 5000);
console.log(emp.toString()); // Output: Name: John, Age: 25, Salary: 5000

// Exercise 2
class Shape {
    area() {
        return 0;
    }
}

class Rectangle extends Shape {
    constructor(public width: number, public height: number) {
        super();
    }

    area() {
        return this.width * this.height;
    }
}

class Circle extends Shape {
    constructor(public radius: number) {
        super();
    }

    area() {
        return Math.PI * this.radius * this.radius;
    }
}

let rect = new Rectangle(5, 10);
console.log(rect.area()); // Output: 50

let circle = new Circle(5);
console.log(circle.area()); // Output: 78.53981633974483