How to call base.base.method()?

Question

// Cannot change source code
class Base
{
    public virtual void Say()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Called from Base.");
    }
}

// Cannot change source code
class Derived : Base
{
    public override void Say()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Called from Derived.");
        base.Say();
    }
}

class SpecialDerived : Derived
{
    public override void Say()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Called from Special Derived.");
        base.Say();
    }
}

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        SpecialDerived sd = new SpecialDerived();
        sd.Say();
    }
}

The result is:

Called from Special Derived.
Called from Derived. /* this is not expected */
Called from Base.

How can I rewrite SpecialDerived class so that middle class "Derived"'s method is not called?

UPDATE: The reason why I want to inherit from Derived instead of Base is Derived class contains a lot of other implementations. Since I can't do base.base.method() here, I guess the best way is to do the following?

// Cannot change source code

class Derived : Base
{
    public override void Say()
    {
        CustomSay();

        base.Say();
    }

    protected virtual void CustomSay()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Called from Derived.");
    }
}

class SpecialDerived : Derived
{
    /*
    public override void Say()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Called from Special Derived.");
        base.Say();
    }
    */

    protected override void CustomSay()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Called from Special Derived.");
    }
}

Answer 1

Just want to add this here, since people still return to this question even after many time. Of course it's bad practice, but it's still possible (in principle) to do what author wants with:

class SpecialDerived : Derived
{
    public override void Say()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Called from Special Derived.");
        var ptr = typeof(Base).GetMethod("Say").MethodHandle.GetFunctionPointer();            
        var baseSay = (Action)Activator.CreateInstance(typeof(Action), this, ptr);
        baseSay();            
    }
}

Answer 2

This is a bad programming practice, and not allowed in C#. It's a bad programming practice because

• The details of the grandbase are implementation details of the base; you shouldn't be relying on them. The base class is providing an abstraction overtop of the grandbase; you should be using that abstraction, not building a bypass to avoid it.

• To illustrate a specific example of the previous point: if allowed, this pattern would be yet another way of making code susceptible to brittle-base-class failures. Suppose C derives from B which derives from A. Code in C uses base.base to call a method of A. Then the author of B realizes that they have put too much gear in class B, and a better approach is to make intermediate class B2 that derives from A, and B derives from B2. After that change, code in C is calling a method in B2, not in A, because C's author made an assumption that the implementation details of B, namely, that its direct base class is A, would never change. Many design decisions in C# are to mitigate the likelihood of various kinds of brittle base failures; the decision to make base.base illegal entirely prevents this particular flavour of that failure pattern.

• You derived from your base because you like what it does and want to reuse and extend it. If you don't like what it does and want to work around it rather than work with it, then why did you derive from it in the first place? Derive from the grandbase yourself if that's the functionality you want to use and extend.

• The base might require certain invariants for security or semantic consistency purposes that are maintained by the details of how the base uses the methods of the grandbase. Allowing a derived class of the base to skip the code that maintains those invariants could put the base into an inconsistent, corrupted state.

Answer 3

You can't from C#. From IL, this is actually supported. You can do a non-virt call to any of your parent classes... but please don't. :)

Answer 4

The answer (which I know is not what you're looking for) is:

class SpecialDerived : Base
{
    public override void Say()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Called from Special Derived.");
        base.Say();
    }
}

The truth is, you only have direct interaction with the class you inherit from. Think of that class as a layer - providing as much or as little of it or its parent's functionality as it desires to its derived classes.

EDIT:

Your edit works, but I think I would use something like this:

class Derived : Base
{
    protected bool _useBaseSay = false;

    public override void Say()
    {
        if(this._useBaseSay)
            base.Say();
        else
            Console.WriteLine("Called from Derived");
    }
}

Of course, in a real implementation, you might do something more like this for extensibility and maintainability:

class Derived : Base
{
    protected enum Mode
    {
        Standard,
        BaseFunctionality,
        Verbose
        //etc
    }

    protected Mode Mode
    {
        get; set;
    }

    public override void Say()
    {
        if(this.Mode == Mode.BaseFunctionality)
            base.Say();
        else
            Console.WriteLine("Called from Derived");
    }
}

Then, derived classes can control their parents' state appropriately.

Answer 5

Why not simply cast the child class to a specific parent class and invoke the specific implementation then? This is a special case situation and a special case solution should be used. You will have to use the new keyword in the children methods though.

public class SuperBase
{
    public string Speak() { return "Blah in SuperBase"; }
}

public class Base : SuperBase
{
    public new string Speak() { return "Blah in Base"; }
}

public class Child : Base
{
    public new string Speak() { return "Blah in Child"; }
}

public partial class MainWindow : Window
{
    public MainWindow()
    {
        InitializeComponent();

        Child childObj = new Child();

        Console.WriteLine(childObj.Speak());

        // casting the child to parent first and then calling Speak()
        Console.WriteLine((childObj as Base).Speak()); 

        Console.WriteLine((childObj as SuperBase).Speak());
    }
}

Answer 6

public class A
{
    public int i = 0;
    internal virtual void test()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("A test");
    }
}

public class B : A
{
    public new int i = 1;
    public new void test()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("B test");
    }
}

public class C : B
{
    public new int i = 2;
    public new void test()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("C test - ");
        (this as A).test(); 
    }
}

Answer 7

You can also make a simple function in first level derived class, to call grand base function

Answer 8

My 2c for this is to implement the functionality you require to be called in a toolkit class and call that from wherever you need:

// Util.cs
static class Util 
{
    static void DoSomething( FooBase foo ) {}
}

// FooBase.cs
class FooBase
{
    virtual void Do() { Util.DoSomething( this ); }
}


// FooDerived.cs
class FooDerived : FooBase
{
    override void Do() { ... }
}

// FooDerived2.cs
class FooDerived2 : FooDerived
{
    override void Do() { Util.DoSomething( this ); }
}

This does require some thought as to access privilege, you may need to add some internal accessor methods to facilitate the functionality.

Answer 9

In cases where you do not have access to the derived class source, but need all the source of the derived class besides the current method, then I would recommended you should also do a derived class and call the implementation of the derived class.

Here is an example:

//No access to the source of the following classes
public class Base
{
     public virtual void method1(){ Console.WriteLine("In Base");}
}
public class Derived : Base
{
     public override void method1(){ Console.WriteLine("In Derived");}
     public void method2(){ Console.WriteLine("Some important method in Derived");}
}

//Here should go your classes
//First do your own derived class
public class MyDerived : Base
{         
}

//Then derive from the derived class 
//and call the bass class implementation via your derived class
public class specialDerived : Derived
{
     public override void method1()
     { 
          MyDerived md = new MyDerived();
          //This is actually the base.base class implementation
          MyDerived.method1();  
     }         
}

Answer 10

As can be seen from previous posts, one can argue that if class functionality needs to be circumvented then something is wrong in the class architecture. That might be true, but one cannot always restructure or refactor the class structure on a large mature project. The various levels of change management might be one problem, but to keep existing functionality operating the same after refactoring is not always a trivial task, especially if time constraints apply. On a mature project it can be quite an undertaking to keep various regression tests from passing after a code restructure; there are often obscure "oddities" that show up. We had a similar problem in some cases inherited functionality should not execute (or should perform something else). The approach we followed below, was to put the base code that need to be excluded in a separate virtual function. This function can then be overridden in the derived class and the functionality excluded or altered. In this example "Text 2" can be prevented from output in the derived class.

public class Base
{
    public virtual void Foo()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Hello from Base");
    }
}

public class Derived : Base
{
    public override void Foo()
    {
        base.Foo();
        Console.WriteLine("Text 1");
        WriteText2Func();
        Console.WriteLine("Text 3");
    }

    protected virtual void WriteText2Func()
    {  
        Console.WriteLine("Text 2");  
    }
}

public class Special : Derived
{
    public override void WriteText2Func()
    {
        //WriteText2Func will write nothing when 
        //method Foo is called from class Special.
        //Also it can be modified to do something else.
    }
}

Answer 11

There seems to be a lot of these questions surrounding inheriting a member method from a Grandparent Class, overriding it in a second Class, then calling its method again from a Grandchild Class. Why not just inherit the grandparent's members down to the grandchildren?

class A
{
    private string mystring = "A";    
    public string Method1()
    {
        return mystring;
    }
}

class B : A
{
    // this inherits Method1() naturally
}

class C : B
{
    // this inherits Method1() naturally
}


string newstring = "";
A a = new A();
B b = new B();
C c = new C();
newstring = a.Method1();// returns "A"
newstring = b.Method1();// returns "A"
newstring = c.Method1();// returns "A"

Seems simple....the grandchild inherits the grandparents method here. Think about it.....that's how "Object" and its members like ToString() are inherited down to all classes in C#. I'm thinking Microsoft has not done a good job of explaining basic inheritance. There is too much focus on polymorphism and implementation. When I dig through their documentation there are no examples of this very basic idea. :(

Answer 12

I had the same problem as the OP, where I only wanted to override a single method in the middle Class, leaving all other methods alone. My scenario was:

Class A - base class, DB access, uneditable.

Class B : A - "record type" specific functionality (editable, but only if backward compatible).

Class C : B - one particular field for one particular client.

I did very similar to the second part of the OP posting, except I put the base call into it's own method, which I called from from Say() method.

class Derived : Base
{
    public override void Say()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Called from Derived.");

        BaseSay();
    }

    protected virtual void BaseSay()
    {
        base.Say();
    }
}

class SpecialDerived : Derived
{
    
    public override void Say()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Called from Special Derived.");
        base.BaseSay();
    }
}

You could repeat this ad infinitum, giving, for example SpecialDerived a BaseBaseSay() method if you needed an ExtraSpecialDerived override to the SpecialDerived.

The best part of this is that if the Derived changes its inheritance from Base to Base2, all other overrides follow suit without needing changes.

Answer 13

If you want to access to base class data you must use "this" keyword or you use this keyword as reference for class.

namespace thiskeyword
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            I i = new I();
            int res = i.m1();
            Console.WriteLine(res);
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }

    public class E
    {
        new public int x = 3;
    }

    public class F:E
    {
        new public int x = 5;
    }

    public class G:F
    {
        new public int x = 50;
    }

    public class H:G
    {
        new public int x = 20;
    }

    public class I:H
    {
        new public int x = 30;

        public int m1()
        {
           // (this as <classname >) will use for accessing data to base class

            int z = (this as I).x + base.x + (this as G).x + (this as F).x + (this as E).x; // base.x refer to H
            return z;
        }
    }
}