Question

I am currently working on implementing multiple events which share common properties and are basically the same: Templates. Our event provider applies several events like SomeTemplateAddedEvent and SomeOtherTemplateAddedEvent. There could possibly come more variations later, so I was thinking about implementing a base class for each TemplateAddedEvent since they all share common properties. But I am doubtful if this is the right way to go, since some people prefer events to be simple classes containing every property instead of having to dig deeper to find out what the event can provide.

I hope someone can shed some light on this subject.

Answer 1

Inheritance is normally used for two orthogonal reasons – to reuse functionality and to declare an “is-a” relationship between classes. It seems that you’re using it for the first reason. This reason is a weaker argument because reuse can also be attained with composition. The question to ask then is whether there exists an “is-a” relationship between the events. Sometimes inheritance among events is desirable, such as when it makes sense to provide a handler for all events deriving from the base class.

Overall, I’d caution against inheritance if it is only applied to attain code reuse. If it is an appropriate statement about the domain, then it can make sense.