#PYTHON INHERITANCE HOW TO#
#PYTHON INHERITANCE CODE#

We use the class statement and additionally we specify the name of the class we want to inherit from after the name of our class within parentheses: class ChildClass(ParentClass):Įven if we don’t define any methods in our child class we can still call the methods from the parent class as if they were implemented in the child one.

#PYTHON INHERITANCE HOW TO#

I will define four child classes for the four football roles: goalkeeper, defender, midfielder and striker.Īs we have seen before, here is how to create a class in Python that inherits from another class. Let’s create child classes that represent football players. We could use the Player class as Parent class from which we can derive classes for players in different sports. Its constructor takes a name and a sport: class Player: A First Example of Class Inheritance in Pythonįirstly, we create a base class called Player. This is very powerful and it allows you to create complex Python programs with very few lines of code.Īnd now, let’s have a look at a practical example of inheritance. You can see that the role of a class when it comes to inheritance is not set in stone…what do I mean?Ī class can be both a parent and child class like we have seen with class B in our example. We can define a class called C that inherits from B: class C(B):

In other words B is a child class and A is its parent class. Notice that after the name of the class B I have also included class A within parentheses. The fact that in our program we create a class called B that inherits (or derives) from it: class B(A):

#PYTHON INHERITANCE CODE#

The Python interpreter doesn’t like code that only contains the first line of the class A definition without pass. What error do we see if we don’t include the pass statement in our class? $ python inheritance.py I’m using the pass statement because I don’t want you to focus on the code of the classes right now but just on the concept of inheritance itself. Using the pass statement is a common technique to create the structure of your program and avoid errors raised by the interpreter due to missing implementation in a class. The pass statement is used in Python classes to define a class without implementing any code in it (e.g. What is the pass statement in a Python class? To simplify this example we will just use the pass statement in the implementation of each class. Let’s start by defining a class called A in the way we define any class in Python. What’s the difference between these two when it comes to the way we define them? We have talked about Parent and Child classes… We will work on a simple football game and show how inheritance works in Python.īut first let’s start with some super important inheritance basics! Difference Between a Parent and a Child Class It’s also called Derived class or Subclass. The Child class is the class that inherits from the Parent class. It’s also called Base class or Superclass. The first two concepts to learn about Python inheritance are the Parent class and Child class.Ī Parent class is a class you inherit from in your program to reuse its code. Let’s learn how to use it.Ĭlass Inheritance allows to create classes based on other classes with the aim of reusing Python code that has already been implemented instead of having to reimplement similar code.

When you create a Python application there is one thing that can make your life a lot easier: class inheritance.