Class diagrams

To represent inheritance between classes, we can use a class diagram showing which classes inherit from which other classes. This may make the terms ‘superclass’ and ‘subclass’ easier to remember, as super- indicates the class above, while sub- indicates the class below. Some people like to compare these diagrams to family trees.

In the diagram, each class is represented by a rectangle. An arrow points towards the class from which something is inherited.

Looking at a class diagram can also help us to understand polymorphism. If a class inherits from another class, it can also be considered to be an object of that class. For example, Enemy inherits from Character, so Enemy is a Character.

In week 1 we used the gpiozero library to create an LED object in code to represent a physical LED.

We can see in the diagram below that the class LED is a subclass of OutputDevice. This means that LED is an OutputDevice – it inherits the properties of a generic OutputDevice and adds some specialised methods of its own.

Buzzer is also a subclass of OutputDevice, but it has different functionality. If you look into the documentation, you will find that LED has a blink() method, whereas Buzzer has a beep() method. Both LED and Buzzer inherit the same on() and off() methods from OutputDevice.