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c#dry

Can I inherit constructors?


I know it's not possible to inherit constructors in C#, but there's probably a way to do what I want to do.

I have a base class that is inherited by many other classes, and it has an Init method that does some initializing taking 1 parameter. All other inheriting classes also need this initializing, but I'd need to create separate constructors for all of them that would like like this:

public Constructor(Parameter p) {
    base.Init(p);
}

That totally violates the DRY principles! How can I have all necessary stuff initialized without creating dozens of constructors?


Solution

  • You don't need to create loads of constructors, all with the same code; you create only one, but have the derived classes call the base constructor:

    public class Base
    {
        public Base(Parameter p)
        {
            Init(p)
        }
    
        void Init(Parameter p)
        {
            // common initialisation code
        }
    }
    
    public class Derived : Base
    {
        public Derived(Parameter p) : base(p)
        {
     
        }
    }