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Composition over inheritance (or composite reuse principle) in object-oriented programming (OOP) is the principle that classes should favor polymorphic behavior and code reuse by their composition (by containing instances of other classes that implement the desired functionality) over inheritance from a base or parent class. [2]
The doctrine of composition over inheritance advocates implementing has-a relationships using composition instead of inheritance. For example, instead of inheriting from class Person, class Employee could give each Employee object an internal Person object, which it then has the opportunity to hide from external code even if class Person has ...
Inheritance is contrasted with object composition, where one object contains another object (or objects of one class contain objects of another class); see composition over inheritance. In contrast to subtyping’s is-a relationship, composition implements a has-a relationship.
The relationships are specified in the science of object-oriented design and object interface standards defined by popular use, language designers (Java, C++, Smalltalk, Visual Prolog) and standards committees for software design like the Object Management Group. The class hierarchy can be as deep as needed.
In software engineering, the delegation pattern is an object-oriented design pattern that allows object composition to achieve the same code reuse as inheritance. In delegation, an object handles a request by delegating to a second object (the delegate). The delegate is a helper object, but with the original context.
Inheritance, by contrast, typically targets the type rather than the instances, and is restricted to compile time. On the other hand, inheritance can be statically type-checked, while delegation generally cannot without generics (although a restricted version of delegation can be statically typesafe [7]). Delegation can be termed "run-time ...
Misuses of composition and aggregation. In object-oriented programming this relationship can be represented with a Unified Modeling Language Class diagram. This has-a relationship is also known as composition. As you can see from the Class Diagram on the right a car "has-a" carburetor, or a car is "composed of" a carburetor.
Composite Pattern implementation in Java; Composite pattern description from the Portland Pattern Repository; Composite pattern in UML and in LePUS3, a formal modelling language; Class::Delegation on CPAN "The End of Inheritance: Automatic Run-time Interface Building for Aggregated Objects" by Paul Baranowski