Advanced Python: OOP polymorphism

A great deal in programming is about the so called 'Object Oriented' side of programming.

Python supports OOP as well. This tutorial will show you how to implement polymorphism in your Object Oriented code.

Polymorphism is all about a superclass that has multiple subclasses. The subclasses inherit from the superclass and the superclass doesn't need to know which subclass is currently inheriting and executing.
Don't worry if this doesn't make sense yet, take a look at the following example for clarification:

Let's say we have a program that shows images, but the image can be either of PNG or JPG format. In our case the program will print different things based on the format of the image.

So we'll start by making the base class that all the subclasses will inherit from. The class will also print an error when the image has a wrong extension.

Now onto the subclasses which will inherit from the 'Image' class. The classes also have a method called 'show' which will print a custom message.
Notice how the parent/superclass doesn't need to know which subclass is inheriting in order to work.

Now let's make the objects and call the 'show' methods:

And here's the output:

I hope you learned something and see you in the next post :) !