Is it correct to inherit from built-in classes?

Question

I want to parse an Apache access.log file with a python program in a certain way, and though I am completely new to object-oriented programming, I want to start doing it now.

I am going to create a class ApacheAccessLog, and the only thing I can imagine now, it will be doing is 'readline' method. Is it conventionally correct to inherit from the builtin file class in this case, so the class will behave just like an instance of the file class itself, or not? What is the best way of doing that?

Answer 1

In this case I would use delegation rather than inheritance. It means that your class should contain the file object as an attribute and invoke a readline method on it. You could pass a file object in the constructor of the logger class.

There are at least two reasons for this:

1. Delegation reduces coupling, for example in place of file objects you can use any other object that implements a readline method (duck typing comes handy here).
2. When inheriting from file the public interface of your class becomes unnecessarily broad. It includes all the methods defined on file even if these methods don't make sense in case of Apache log.

Answer 2

I am coming from a Java background but I am fairly confident that the same principles will apply in Python. As a rule of thumb you should never inherit from a class whose implementation you don't understand and control unless that class has been designed specifically for inheritance. If it has been designed in this way it should describe this clearly in its documentation.

The reason for this is that inheritance can potentially bind you to the implementation details of the class that you are inheriting from.

To use an example from Josh Bloch's book 'Effective Java'

If we were to extend the class ArrayList class in order to be able to count the number of items that were added to it during its life-time (not necessarily the number it currently contains) we may be tempted to write something like this.

public class CountingList extends ArrayList {
    int counter = 0;

    public void add(Object o) {
        counter++;
        super.add(0);
    }

    public void addAll(Collection c) {
        count += c.size();
        super.addAll(c);
    }

    // Etc.
}

Now this extension looks like it would accurately count the number of elements that were added to the list but in fact it may not. If ArrayList has implemented addAll by iterating over the Collection provided and calling its interface method addAll for each element then we will count each element added through the addAll method twice. Now the behaviour of our class is dependent on the implementation details of ArrayList.

This is of course in addition to the disadvantage of not being able to use other implementations of List with our CountingList class. Plus the disadvantages of inheriting from a concrete class that are discussed above.

It is my understanding that Python uses a similar (if not identical) method dispatch mechanism to Java and will therefore be subject to the same limitations. If someone could provide an example in Python I'm sure it would be even more useful.

Answer 3

It is perfectly acceptable to inherit from a built in class. In this case I'd say you're right on the money.
The log "is a" file so that tells you inheritance is ok..

General rule.
Dog "is a"n animal, therefore inherit from animal.
Owner "has a"n animal therefore don't inherit from animal.