2.2.2 Inheritance

Classes may inherit from other classes; this is denoted by the extends keyword:

class Point3 extends Point {
  var z:Int;

  public function new(x, y, z) {
    super(x, y);
    this.z = z;
  }
}

This relation is often described as "is-a": any instance of class Point3 is also an instance of Point. Point is then known as the parent class of Point3, which is a child class of Point. A class may have many child classes, but only one parent class. The term "a parent class of class X" usually refers to its direct parent class, the parent class of its parent class and so on.

The code above is very similar to the original Point class, with two new constructs being shown:

• extends Point denotes that this class inherits from class Point
• super(x, y) is the call to the constructor of the parent class, in this case, Point.new

It is not necessary for child classes to define their own constructors, but if they do, a call to super() is mandatory. Unlike some other object-oriented languages, this call can appear anywhere in the constructor code and does not have to be the first expression.

A class may override methods of its parent class, which requires the explicit override keyword. The effects and restrictions of this are detailed in Overriding Methods.

since Haxe 4.0.0

Classes can be declared with the keyword final to prevent them from being extended.

Trivia: :final metadata

Prior to Haxe 4, marking classes as final was possible using the :final metadata.

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