Extends, Override and Super

Photo by Neeku.

AS3 enforces the ideas of Object Oriented Programming (OOP) a lot more than AS2 ever did. One of the fundamental concepts of OOP is inheritance, allowing classes to take the properties and methods of other classes and build upon them further.

In this post, I’ll explain the three most important keywords for using class inheritance in AS3: extends, override and super.

An Example: MovieClip

Let’s take a look at the MovieClip class to see an example of inheritance at work. If you check out the LiveDocs for this class, you’ll see this line in the description:

Inheritance: MovieClip -> Sprite -> DisplayObjectContainer -> InteractiveObject -> DisplayObject -> EventDispatcher -> Object

The arrows simply mean “inherits from”, so MovieClip inherits from Sprite, which in turn inherits from DisplayObjectContainer, and so on, right down to Object.

The Object class is extremely basic, containing just a handful of properties and methods. It’s an empty shell, but because it allows for the possibility of properties and functions to be added, it’s an excellent base for more complex classes.

The EventDispatcher class builds upon Object by adding event-related methods (functions), like addEventListener() and dispatchEvent().

Now, because DisplayObject inherits from EventDispatcher, it also contains addEventListener(), dispatchEvent(), and so on. It then builds upon this by adding methods, properties, and interfaces that allow instances to be displayed on screen — for example, x and y properties for positioning, and the hitTestObject() method for checking for overlaps.

The InteractiveObject class allows for user interaction, adding properties like mouseEnabled and tabIndex, and events like click and keyDown.

Then we have the DisplayObjectContainer class, which can contain other DisplayObjects (and descendents of DisplayObject, like InteractiveObject and DisplayObjectContainer) with methods like addChild().

The Sprite class adds, among other things, the graphics property, which itself is an instance of the Graphics class that allows for the drawing of vector shapes within the object. So the Sprite adds vector drawing capability, and some miscellaneous interface features.

Finally we reach the MovieClip class, whose main addition is that of a timeline, allowing for animation. Therefore, it has methods like nextFrame(), play() and goToAndStop(), and properties like currentFrame and totalFrame.

If you want the full details of what each class does, take a look at their corresponding LiveDocs page, and turn off “Show Inherited Public Properties/Methods”.

So that’s a concrete example of how Flash uses inheritance to structure its own classes. How can we use it?

Extends

One thing that bugs me about the MovieClip class is that, if it’s on the last frame and I call nextFrame(), it stays on the last frame. I’d much prefer it to go back to the first frame, to make it easier to loop.

Rather than just complaining, let’s make our own class, LoopingMovieClip, that has this feature.

We’ll need to use the extends keyword for this. Create a new class file like so:

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package  
{
	import flash.display.MovieClip;
 
	public class LoopingMovieClip extends MovieClip
	{
		public function LoopingMovieClip() 
		{
 
		}
	}
}

By writing extends MovieClip in line 5 (and importing the MovieClip class in line 3), our new class inherits every public (or protected — more on that here) method and property. Of course, this means that at the minute LoopingMovieClip has no functionality other than that which MovieClip already has.

I’m going to add a new function, nextFrameOrLoopToFirst(), that’ll do what I want:

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package  
{
	import flash.display.MovieClip;
 
	public class LoopingMovieClip extends MovieClip
	{
		public function LoopingMovieClip() 
		{
 
		}
 
		public function nextFrameOrLoopToFirst():void 
		{
			if ( currentFrame == totalFrames )
			{
				gotoAndStop( 1 );
			}
			else
			{
				gotoAndStop( currentFrame + 1 );
			}
		}
	}
}

Very simple. If you want to test it out in the Flash IDE, just create a new movie clip symbol as usual, right-click it in the library, select Properties, export it for ActionScript, and set its Base class to LoopingMovieClip. You can give its class any name you want, and it’ll inherit from the base class. Now add a few frames to the symbol, and try running our new function.

It works, but wouldn’t it be better if we could make the nextFrame() method itself do this?

Override

If you try to do the same as before, but call the function nextFrame() instead of nextFrameOrLoopToFirst(), like so:

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package  
{
	import flash.display.MovieClip;
 
	public class LoopingMovieClip extends MovieClip
	{
		public function LoopingMovieClip() 
		{
 
		}
 
		public function nextFrame():void 
		{
			if ( currentFrame == totalFrames )
			{
				gotoAndStop( 1 );
			}
			else
			{
				gotoAndStop( currentFrame + 1 );
			}
		}
	}
}

…you’ll get the following error:

1024: Overriding a function that is not marked for override.

This is telling us that nextFrame() is already a function in one of the classes that LoopingMovieClip inherits from (and therefore in LoopingMovieClip itself), and we can’t have two functions with the same name. You will probably have guessed that we can use the override keyword to get around this. Change your function like so:

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override public function nextFrame():void 
{
	if ( currentFrame == totalFrames )
	{
		gotoAndStop( 1 );
	}
	else
	{
		gotoAndStop( currentFrame + 1 );
	}
}

By adding the override keyword, we’ve told Flash that we’re aware of the inherited nextFrame() function, but we’d like to replace it with our own. If you test it out now, you’ll see we don’t get any errors, and that our nextFrame() function acts just like our nextFrameOrLoopToFirst() function did before.

One thing to bear in mind here is that we need to match the “signature” of the function that we are overriding — i.e., whether it’s public or protected, the parameters it accepts, and the type of variable it returns.

For example, we might like to add an optional parameter to the function that allows it to be backwards-compatible:

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override public function nextFrame( p_loop:Boolean = false ):void 
{
	if ( ( p_loop ) && ( currentFrame == totalFrames ) )
	{
		gotoAndStop( 1 );
	}
	else
	{
		gotoAndStop( currentFrame + 1 );
	}
}

The idea here is that calling nextFrame() will not cause any looping, so our existing code will act the same with LoopingMovieClips as it did with MovieClips. Trouble is, when we test this, this error occurs:

1023: Incompatible override.

In other words, because we changed the signature of our function (in this case by altering the parameters allowed), it’s no longer identical to the original and so can’t override it. Watch out for this.

Next, let’s tackle gotoAndStop(). If I call gotoAndStop( 7 ) on a 5-frame movie clip, I’d like it to go to frame 2. Sounds simple, but there’s a snag…

Super

In theory this should be similar to what we did before. Start by defining the function:

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override public function gotoAndStop( frame:Object, scene:String = null ):void 
{
 
}

(FlashDevelop tells me the signature, but you can look it up in the LiveDocs.)

To work out which frame we actually want, we can use the modulo operator, represented by a percentage sign %. This is like division, but it gives us the remainder of the expression.

If you’re rusty on remainders, here’s a quick recap.

• 7 = ( 5 * 1 ) + 2, so 7 divided by 5 is 1 remainder 2, and 7 % 5 = 2
• 14 = ( 5 * 2 ) + 4, so 14 divided by 5 is 2 remainder 4, and 14 % 5 = 4
• 20 = ( 5 * 4 ) + 0, so 20 divided by 5 is 4 remainder 0, and 20 % 5 = 0
• 126 = ( 5 * 25 ) + 1, so 126 divided by 5 is 25 remainder 1, and 126 % 5 = 1
• 3 = ( 5 * 0 ) + 3, so 3 divided by 5 is 0 remainder 3, and 3 % 5 = 3

So if we call gotoAndStop( someFrame ) the frame we want to actually go to is someFrame % totalFrames. (Well, unless the result is zero — in that case, we want to go to totalFrames, but let’s ignore this detail for now.)

When we try to put this in, however, there’s a problem:

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override public function gotoAndStop( frame:Object, scene:String = null ):void 
{
	var requestedFrame:int = frame as int;
	var actualFrame:int = requestedFrame % totalFrames;
	gotoAndStop( actualFrame )
}

(Line 26 isn’t a real problem; Flash expects the frame to be input as an Object rather than an int — most likely so that we can pass a frame label through as a String, as RedRail points out — so here we convert the frame parameter to an int so that we can use the modulo operator on it.)

In line 28 we need to call gotoAndStop(), but… we’ve already overriden it! What we need to call is the original gotoAndStop() method, the one defined by MovieClip. This is where super comes in.

The super keyword allows us to access the methods and functions of the inherited class. It’s used like this:

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override public function gotoAndStop( frame:Object, scene:String = null ):void 
{
	var requestedFrame:int = frame as int;
	var actualFrame:int = requestedFrame % totalFrames;
	super.gotoAndStop( actualFrame )
}

Also, the constructor function — the function with the same name as the class that is run when an instance of that class is created — acts like an automatically overridden function, in the sense that the constructor of the inherited class can be accessed using super. To do this, just call super(), rather than super.constructor() or super.MovieClip() or whatever. Remember to make sure the list of parameters match!

Note: if you don’t include a call to super() in your class’s constructor, then Flash will call super() before your constructor is run, anyway – so there’s no getting away from it.

Wrapping Up

Admittedly the functions we’ve created here could do with some improvement. Calling gotoAndStop( 5 ) on a five-frame movie clip will actually attempt to go to frame #0 with the code I’ve written, so be sure to change that if you want to use this in a real project. Also, nextFrame() could just call gotoAndStop( currentFrame + 1 ) to simplify things, and you might want to add prevFrame() and gotoAndPlay() functions. Plus, gotoAndStop() needs to be edited to handle frame labels and scenes. It’s a work in progress

Hopefully you find the actual concepts clear, though If you’ve any questions, please post them in the comments.

Tagged as: AS3, extends, oop, override, super