Force the use of interface instead of concrete implementation in declaration (.NET)
- by gammelgul
In C++, you can do the following:
class base_class
{
public:
virtual void do_something() = 0;
};
class derived_class : public base_class
{
private:
virtual void do_something()
{
std::cout << "do_something() called";
}
};
The derived_class overrides the method do_something() and makes it private. The effect is, that the only way to call this method is like this:
base_class *object = new derived_class();
object->do_something();
If you declare the object as of type derived_class, you can't call the method because it's private:
derived_class *object = new derived_class();
object->do_something();
// --> error C2248: '::derived_class::do_something' : cannot access private member declared in class '::derived_class'
I think this is quite nice, because if you create an abstract class that is used as an interface, you can make sure that nobody accidentally declares a field as the concrete type, but always uses the interface class.
Since in C# / .NET in general, you aren't allowed to narrow the access from public to private when overriding a method, is there a way to achieve a similar effect here?
