An abstract class

An abstract class is something between inheritance and an interface. In inheritance, a child class extends a parent class, where both the classes have full implementations. In an interface, a parent class does not have any implementation and depends on child classes completely. There are scenarios where a parent class knows the common implementations needed by all child classes but the remaining implementation differs for all.

In the same game that we discussed earlier, there are multiple ways to gain points. If Mario gets any coin, then the overall score will be added (known), but there are different kinds of coins (unknown). Coins may be in blue, yellow, or different colors. Each color will add different scores.

It's time to see an abstract class in action:

public abstract class GameCoin { 
     
  public abstract Integer coinValue(); 
     
  public Integer absorbCoin(Integer existingPoint){ 
    return existingPoint + coinValue(); 
  }  
} 

The coinValue method is declared using the abstract keyword, which means that all child classes need to implement this. However, it is known that whatever this method returns, it needs to be added to the existing points; and therefore, the absorbCoin method does not need to be written again and again in all child classes. Don't get confused about how we have used an abstract method in absorbCoin. Like interfaces, we cannot instantiate an abstract class; therefore, whenever absorbCoin() is called from a child class, it will be implemented.

Let's play it out:

public class BlueCoin extends GameCoin{ 
    public override Integer coinValue(){ 
        return 50; 
    } 
} 
 
public class YellowCoin extends GameCoin{ 
   public override Integer coinValue(){ 
        return 10; 
    } 
} 

The preceding two child classes extend the  GameCoin abstract class.

The anonymous Apex code for testing is as follows:

Integer totalPoints = 0; 
GameCoin coins = new BlueCoin(); 
totalPoints = coins.absorbCoin(
  totalPoints); 
 
coins = new YellowCoin(); 
totalPoints = coins.absorbCoin(totalPoints); 
 
coins = new BlueCoin(); 
totalPoints = coins.absorbCoin(totalPoints); 
System.debug('Total points - ' + totalPoints); 

The output of this code will be as follows:

Total points - 110 

The following class diagram shows two classes that extend an abstract class and implement an abstract method.