Inheritance allows us to define a class that inherits all the methods and properties from another class.
1.1 Basic Inheritance
# Parent/Base class
class Animal:
def __init__(self, name):
self.name = name
def speak(self):
return f"{self.name} makes a sound"
# Child/Derived class
class Dog(Animal):
def speak(self):
return f"{self.name} says Woof!"
def wag_tail(self):
return f"{self.name} is wagging its tail"
# Create instances
animal = Animal("Generic Animal")
dog = Dog("Buddy")
print(animal.speak()) # Generic Animal makes a sound
print(dog.speak()) # Buddy says Woof!
print(dog.wag_tail()) # Buddy is wagging its tail
1.2 The super() Function
class Cat(Animal):
def __init__(self, name, color):
super().__init__(name) # Call parent's __init__
self.color = color
def speak(self):
return f"{self.name} (a {self.color} cat) says Meow!"
cat = Cat("Whiskers", "black")
print(cat.speak()) # Whiskers (a black cat) says Meow!
Note: Always use
super() to call parent class methods rather than hardcoding the parent class name. This makes your code more maintainable, especially with multiple inheritance.