Inheritance

Kotlin Tutorial

Kotlin Classes

Inheritance:

In Kotlin, we can inherit properties and functions of one class from another class. In the concept of inheritance we got two categories:

  • Superclass: The parent class from which a class is inherited.
  • Subclass: The child class that inherits from another class. 

In Kotlin, the classes are final by default – they cannot be inherited. To make them inheritable there is a keyword open:

In the example below we have 2 classes ParentClass and ChildClass, we inherit the ChildClass from ParentClass; but you will see the compile time error ( This type is final, so it cannot be inherited from ).

				
					class ParentClass() {}
class ChildClass : ParentClass() {}

To overcome this error mark the ParentClass with the keyword open like in the example below:

				
					open class ParentClass() {}
class ChildClass : ParentClass() {}

Now the error will be gone.

Let’s get things more interesting by creating a function in ParentClass and calling it from the ChildClass instance (object).

				
					fun main(args: Array<String>) {
   val c1 = ChildClass()
   c1.someActivity()
}

open class ParentClass() {
   fun someActivity() {
       println("Parent class activity")
   }
}

class ChildClass : ParentClass() {}

The code above outputs:

				
					Parent class activity

Why Inheritance:

The concept of inheritance is useful for reusability of code like reuse the properties and the functions of an already existing class when you create a new class and inherit it.