Inheritance in Python – Strong Foundations for Efficient Programming

Inheritance is a fundamental part of object-oriented programming that allows you to avoid repetitions and design your code professionally and clearly. When you write a database application, you might need some general database logic that you want to reuse for different database types. Here you will learn how to implement inheritance in Python to structure your classes efficiently.

Key Takeaways

Inheritance allows you to create a base class whose properties and methods can be inherited by derived classes. This reduces code duplication and improves maintainability.

Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1: Create a Base Class

In this step, you will define your base class that contains general properties for your database adapters. We will name it DBAdapter.

Start by defining the class and creating the initializer to pass the username and password. Here’s how to do it.

Step 2: Add a Default Method

To make your class more complete, add a method that simulates establishing a connection. This method might simply print a message to show that a connection has been made.

Step 3: Inherit from the Base Class

Now you will create a new class MySQLAdapter that inherits from your DBAdapter class. This is done by specifying the base class in parentheses after the class name.

Step 4: Create an Instance of the Derived Class

Now that you have created the MySQLAdapter class, you can create an instance of this class and access the properties of the base class without any modifications.

Step 5: Use the Inherited Method

Now you can use the connect method from the base class to establish a connection with the database. This illustrates how parent class functions can be utilized in the derived class.

Step 6: Merging Functionalities

To fully take advantage of inheritance, you should also consider implementing specific methods for the MySQLAdapter class that provide additional functionalities.

Summary – Utilizing Inheritance in Python

Using inheritance in Python allows you to create an efficient and maintainable software architecture. By creating a base class and one or more derived classes, you can reuse code and implement specific properties for various database types.