OOP: Inheritance & Super

💎 Ruby Lesson 12 Intermediate

Inheritance derived child subclasses from parent base classes. Ruby supports single inheritance and provides the super keyword to invoke parent methods.

1 Overrides & Constructor Chaining using super

In Ruby, subclasses inherit from parent classes using the **`<`** symbol: `class Sub < Parent`. When overriding a parent method, you can invoke the parent class's original implementation by calling **`super`**.

2 Inheritance Code

Let's run a program demonstrating class inheritance, overrides, and invoking parent methods with super:

Ruby — Inheritance ▶ Run Code

class Animal
  attr_accessor :name

  def initialize(name)
    @name = name
  end

  def speak
    "Generic animal sound"
  end
end

# Dog inherits from Animal
class Dog < Animal
  def speak
    # Call parent method, append child implementation details
    super + " - Woof! Woof!"
  end
end

dog = Dog.new("Buddy")
puts dog.speak

3 Code Challenge

Challenge: Write a parent class called `Vehicle` and a child subclass called `Truck`. Override a method `drive` in `Truck` that invokes `super` to print the parent message first, followed by a custom truck message.