Question

Is there anyway (or a pattern) to enforce a call to a parent method?

I have an abstract class like so:

abstract class APrimitive{
   public function validate(){
      //Do some stuff that applies all classes that extend APrimitive
   }
}

Then I have classes that extend upon the APrimitive “base”:

class CSophisticated extends APrimitive{

   public function validate(){
       //First call the parent version:
       parent::validate();

       //Then do something more sophisticated here.
   }
}

The problem is that if we come back to the code in a few months time, and create a few more classes like CSophisticated with a validate() method, there is a possibility that we might forget to make a call to parent::validate() in that method.

Note that some CSophisticated classes may not have the validate() method, so the parent version will be called.

I understand that it is possible to just put in a comment somewhere, to remind the programmer to call parent::validate(), but is there a better way? Perhaps an automated way to throw an exception if the call to parent::validate() was not made in the validate() method would be nice.

Answer 1

You can enforce the call with the following:

abstract class APrimitive{
   final public function validate(){
      //do the logic in validate
      overrideValidate();
   }
   protected function overrideValidate(){
   }
}

class CSophisticated extends APrimitive{

   protected function overrideValidate(){

   }
}

Now only calls to validate are permitted, which will in turn call your overridden method. The syntax may be a little off (PHP is not my language of choice) but the principle is applyable to most OOP languages.

FURTHER EXPLANATION:

abstract class APrimitive{
   public function validate(){
      echo 'APrimitive validate call.';
      overrideValidate();
   }
   protected function overrideValidate(){
   }
}

class CSophisticated extends APrimitive{

   protected function overrideValidate(){
       echo 'CSophisticated call.';
   }
}

CSophisticated foo;
foo.overrideValidate(); //error - overrideValidate is protected
foo.validate(); //

Output:

APrimitive validate call.
CSophisticated call.

The function call basically does the following:

foo.validate() -> APrimitive.validate() -> ASophisticated.overrideValidate() (or APrimitive.overrideValidate() if it wasn't overriden)