Let's finish off this chapter with a more practical example of using inheritance. The task is to be able to calculate the area and the perimeter of different shapes, as well as to draw them, while reusing as much code as possible.
Let's have one Shape
constructor that contains all of the common parts. From there, we can have Triangle
, Rectangle
and Square
constructors, all inheriting from Shape
. A square is really a rectangle with same-length sides, so let's reuse Rectangle
when building the Square
.
In order to define a shape, we'll use points with x and y coordinates. A generic shape can have any number of points. A triangle is defined with three points, a rectangle (to keep it simpler)—with one point and the lengths of the sides. The perimeter of any shape is the sum of its sides' lengths. The area is shape-specific and will be implemented by each shape.
The common functionality in Shape
would be:
A
draw()
method that can draw any shape given the points...