How to implement an abstract class in Go?

Question

How to implement an abstract class in Go? As Go doesn't allow us to have fields in interfaces, that would be a stateless object. So, in other words, is it possible to have some kind of default implementation for a method in Go?

Consider an example:

type Daemon interface {
    start(time.Duration)
    doWork()
}

func (daemon *Daemon) start(duration time.Duration) {
    ticker := time.NewTicker(duration)

    // this will call daemon.doWork() periodically  
    go func() {
        for {
            <- ticker.C
            daemon.doWork()
        }
    }()
}

type ConcreteDaemonA struct { foo int }
type ConcreteDaemonB struct { bar int }

func (daemon *ConcreteDaemonA) doWork() {
    daemon.foo++
    fmt.Println("A: ", daemon.foo)
}

func (daemon *ConcreteDaemonB) doWork() {
    daemon.bar--
    fmt.Println("B: ", daemon.bar)
}

func main() {
    dA := new(ConcreteDaemonA)
    dB := new(ConcreteDaemonB)

    start(dA, 1 * time.Second)
    start(dB, 5 * time.Second)

    time.Sleep(100 * time.Second)
}

This won't compile as it's not possible to use interface as a receiver.

In fact, I have already answered my question (see the answer below). However, is it an idiomatic way to implement such logic? Are there any reasons not to have a default implementation besides language's simplicity?

Answer 1

An easy solution is to move daemon *Daemon to the argument list (thus removing start(...) from the interface):

type Daemon interface {
    // start(time.Duration)
    doWork()
}

func start(daemon Daemon, duration time.Duration) { ... }

func main() {
    ...
    start(dA, 1 * time.Second)
    start(dB, 5 * time.Second)
    ...
}