Object Oriented Programming Final Inheritance

From Dr. Pittman's Lecture Slides

Inheritance

The idea that the child class inherits both data and behaviors from the parent class

Benefit of Inheritance

Allows us to make more generic classes from which more specific classes can inherit variables and methods.

Key Word for Inheritance

Extends -

public class Programmer extends Employee{}

Object Class

Automatically extended for every class

Object Class Public Methods

getClass()

hashCode()

toString()

equals()

Premade classes that inherit Object Class

String

ArrayList

Double

toString()

returns a String that represents the object

equals()

compares two objects by checking if their reference values are equivalent (same as ‘==’)

Superclass

Parent Class

Subclass

Child Class

super

super(name, address, phoneNumber, idNumber);

used to reference methods of the parent class

Use of Getters/Setters

If the Super class has any private variables or methods, the subclass will need the getters and setters to modify the private variables

Overriding

@Override

public String toString(){

this allows the method that was inherited to be rewritten to handle the specific need of the subclass while still using the same name and parameter

Overriding

A subclass provides a new implementation for a method defined in tis superclass

Overloading

Multiple methods in the same class share the same name but have different parameters