#A module to provide a functionality as close to the standard OOP inheritance as possible with a bit of my own invention.
The descendant's attributes and functions are not overwritten by those of the ancestor at the time of copying its functions For Multiple hierarchical inheritance - think twice before you use it. You might be much better off using mixins.
###Installation
npm install oop-inheritance
###TODO
- Make some examples( For now see the test for usage examples )
###Features
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Static properties and functions are seamlessly inherited together with the instance ones.
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Instances have a reference to their class and thus can call static functions via that class and reach the whole hierarchical tree.
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Instances have a special superFunction function that is PUBLIC and calls the method of their direct ancestor with the context of the instance. The superFunction is just a helper that instantiates an ancestor and calls on it the required method. You could do this manually using the ancestor property. I chose to leave these things public. You can call any super function from any function you define on your descendant(You're not limited to the function of the same name).
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Already defined functions and properties are not overwritten at the time of inheritance. That means if you define your class first and inherit later, your override functions will be preserved.
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The head of the hierarchy chain can be created manually or using the setStatic function. Manual creation means to assign its "static" property a JSON of desired properties and functions and assigning the object itself to its prototype.class. That value will be used as a reference by its instances. If you use the setStatic helper and still want to assign some values to the object's prototype, beware that setStatic assigns the class to the object's prototype automatically so it's a good idea to first tweak the prototype and only then call setStatic so that the class is not overwritten.
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You can inherit from many sources at the same time. In case of name collisions, the function or property that is defined first, is always preserved but the ancestor will be updated. As of yet, backtracking does not reasonably work with multiple inheritance and nor does calling super functions. The object will always be "aware" of only one branch of its ancestors.