Call super
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Call super is a code smell or anti-pattern of object-oriented programming, i.e. a bad solution to a common design problem. Call super requires users of a particular interface to override the method of a superclass and call the overridden from the overriding method.
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[edit] Description
In object-oriented programming, users can inherit the properties and behaviour of a superclass in subclasses. A subclass can override methods of its superclass, substituting its own implementation of the method for the superclass's implementation. Sometimes the overriding method will completely replace the corresponding functionality in the superclass, while in other cases the superclass's method must still be called from the overriding method. Therefore most programming languages require that an overriding method must explicitly call the overridden method on the superclass for it to be executed.
The call super anti-pattern relies on the users of an interface or framework to derive a subclass from a particular class, override a certain method and require the overridden method to call the original method from the overriding method[1]:
This is often required, since the superclass must perform some setup tasks for the class or framework to work correctly, or since the superclass's main task (which is performed by this method) is only augmented by the subclass.
A better approach to solve these issues is instead to use the template method pattern, where the superclass includes a purely abstract method that must be implemented by the subclasses and have the original method call that method[1]:
The appearance of this anti-pattern in programs is usually due to the fact that few programming languages provide a feature to contractually ensure that a super method is called from a derived class. One language that does have this feature, in a quite radical fashion, is BETA. The feature is found in a limited way in for instance Java, where a base class constructor always calls the parent class constructor.
[edit] Example
Suppose there is a class for generating a report about the inventory of a video rental store. Each particular store has a different way of tabulating the videos currently available, but the algorithm for generating the final report is the same for all stores. A framework that uses the call super anti-pattern may provide the following abstract class (in C#):
abstract class ReportGenerator {
public virtual Report CreateReport() {
// do some calculations
// ...
return new Report(...);
}
}
A user of the class is expected to implement a subclass like this:
class ConcreteReportGenerator : ReportGenerator {
public override Report CreateReport() {
// tabulate data
// ...
return base.CreateReport();
}
}
A preferable interface looks like this:
abstract class ReportGenerator {
public Report CreateReport() {
Tabulate();
// do some calculations
// ...
return new Report(...);
}
protected abstract void Tabulate();
}
An implementation would override this class like this:
class ConcreteReportGenerator : ReportGenerator {
protected override void Tabulate() {
// tabulate data
// ...
}
}
