Inheritance in medicine, describes the passing of genetic information from parent to child through genes. In programming it pretty much the same.
Inheritance in Python allows us to define a class that inherits all methods and properties from another class.
Base class (parent class) is the class being inherited from
Derived class (child class) is the class that inherits from another class
We will be going over 5 types of inheritances
Single Inheritance ,
Single inheritance- when a derived(child) class is derived from a single base(parent) class.
Syntax
# Base class
class Parent:
def fun1(self):
print("This is the parent class.")
class Child:
def fun2(Parent):
print("This is the child class.")
Creating the base class is the same creating any other class
To create a class that inherits the functionalities from another class, you will need to input the parent class as a parameter when creating the child class.
Multiple Inheritance,
Multiple inheritance- when derived(child) class is derived from more than one base(parent) class.
class Prey:
def flees(self):
print("This animal is a hunter")
class Predator:
def fighter(self):
print("This animal is a hunter")
class Rabbit(Prey):
pass
class Lion(Predator):
pass
class Fish(Prey, Predator):
pass
rabbit = Rabbit()
lion = Lion()
fish = Fish()
rabbit.flees() # output This animal is a hunter
lion.fighter() # output This animal is a hunter
fish.flees() # output This animal is a hunter
fish.fighter() # output This animal is a hunter
Multilevel Inheritance, #Multilevel Inheritance
Multilevel inheritance - The inheritance of a derived(child) class from another derived(child) class.
class Base:
pass
class Derived1(Base):
pass
class Derived2(Derived1):
pass
Here we created a Base class, Derived1 class inherits from Base class and Derived2 class inherits Derived1.
Hierarchical Inheritance ,
Hierarchical Inheritance is multiple derived classes are created from the same base class. In the image above we see that there is 1 parent class A that has multiple children B, C, D.
# Base class here
class Parent:
def fun1(self):
print("This function is in base class.")
#Derived class A
class ChildA(Parent):
def fun2(self):
print("This function is the derived class B")
#Derived class B here
class ChildB(Parent):
def fun3(self):
print("This function is the derived class C.")
#Derived class C here
class ChildC(Parent):
def fun4(self):
print("This function is the derived class D.")
object1 = ChildA()
object2 = ChildB()
object3 = ChildC()
object1.fun1()#Output This function is in base class.
object1.fun2()#Output This function is the derived class B
object2.fun1()#Output This function is in base class.
object2.fun3()#Output This function is the derived class C.
object3.fun1()#Output This function is in base class.
object3.fun4()#Output This function is the derived class D.
Here we brought our diagram to life.
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