accessing superclass methods from subclass

[Jean-Michel Pichavant]

ben wrote:
> Ok, thanks for the info.
>
> What would be a better way to do this?  What I'm trying to do is treat
> things in a reasonable OOP manner (all fairly new to me, esp. in
> Python).  Here's a made-up example with a little more context.  Let's
> say you're making a drawing program that can draw various shapes.  So
> in the interest of not repeating oneself, I want a class Shape that
> handles everything that shapes have, such as a color, and a location.
> Then I can subclass Shape to create Square, which has code specific to
> drawing a square (e.g. 4 equal sides).  So, like this:
>
> class Shape:
>
>     x = 0
>     y = 0
>
>     def setColor(self,color):
>         self.color = color
>
>     def setLocation(self,x,y):
>         self.x = x
>         self.y = y
>
>     def getLocation(self):
>         return [self.x,self.y]
>
> class Square(Shape):
>
>     size = 0
>
>     def __init__(self,size):
>         self.size = size
>
>     def draw(self):
>         location = getLocation()
>         # code to draw shape from location[0],location[1] at size size
>         # etc...
>
> It seems to me that you would want the location code handled in the
> Shape class so that I'm not rewriting it for Circle, Triangle, etc.,
> but I'm not allowed to call any of those methods from the subclass.  I
> must be thinking of this in the wrong way.  Help?
>
> thanks!
>
>
>
>   

Hi Ben,

Please do not top post.
You already been given good advices, especially the one suggesting to go 
through the tutorial. You're making basic mistakes here.

Here is a very simple version of your code.

class Shape:

    def __init__(self, x=0, y=0):
        self.x = 0
        self.y = 0
        self.color = None

    def draw(self):
        print 'drawing %s' % self


class Square(Shape):

    def __init__(self,size):
        self.size = size

    def draw(self):
        Shape.draw(self) # this is one way to call the base class method
        location = (self.x, self.y)
        # code to draw shape from self.x, self.y at size self.size
        # etc...


mySquare = Square(5,2)
mySquare.color = 'red'
print mySquare.x
 >>> 5

Since your attributes are flagged as public, you don't really need 
setters & getters.


JM