In the inheritance section we looked at one way to extend a class functionality, there is second way using delegation to extend functionality. With delegation, one object will contain a reference to a different object that it will hand off a request to perform the functionality.
The code below shows how to use delegation with the Bird
class and Penguin
class. The Penguin
class has a reference to the Bird
class and it delegates the call made to it's walk method over to Bird
's walk method.
// ES6
class Bird {
constructor(weight, height) {
this.weight = weight;
this.height = height;
}
walk() {
console.log('walk!');
}
}
class Penguin {
constructor(bird) {
this.bird = bird;
}
walk() {
this.bird.walk();
}
swim() {
console.log('swim!');
}
}
const bird = new Bird(...);
const penguin = new Penguin(bird);
penguin.walk(); //walk!
penguin.swim(); //swim!
A good discussion on 'behaviour delegation' can be found here.