Question

I have an abstract class with a public abstract method on it. I’m wondering if I should just define an interface and have the abstract class implement that instead. Is there a general rule of thumb here? Currently it works just fine, but I want to be mindful of OO conventions. This is currently how it looks:

public abstract class MySuckyClass
{ 
    public bool TryGetMember(GetMemberBinder binder, out object result)
    {
        result = this.GetMember(binder.Name);

        if (result == null)
            return false;

        return true;
    }

    public abstract object GetMember(string memberName);
}

Answer 1

You’re asking a question which has a range of different answers. Will probably vary based on opinion.

Personally, I like defining interfaces and then supplying some canned functionality using an abstract class. This allows me to go back to the interface if I need to supply a different implementation, but saves me time when dealing with methods/properties that do the same thing in multiple implementations.