How to implement multiple inheritance in delphi?

Question

I\'m doing a full rewrite of an old library, and I\'m not sure how to handle this situation (for the sake of being understood, all hail the bike analogy):

I have the

Answer 1

You can try to extract an interface, say IFrontWheel, out of TBikeWheelFront, so that it is a subclass of TBikeWheel but implements IFrontWheel. Then TBikeWheelXYZ inherits from TBikeWheel and TBikeWheelFrontXYZ inherits from TBikeWheelXYZ and implements IFrontWheel.

Then you can define a class TFrontwheel and give it the same methods as the interface, but now you implement them. Then TBikeWheelFront and TBikeWheelXYZ get a private member of type TFrontwheel and the IFrontWheel implementations of them simply delegate to the private member methods.

This way you don't have double implementations.

Answer 2

Another alternative with newer versions of Delphi is to leverage generics in a compositional model. This is particularly useful in the case where the multiple base classes (TBarA and TBarB in this example) are not accessible for modification (ie: framework or library classes). For example (note, the necessary destructor in TFoo<T> is omitted here for brevity) :

program Project1;

uses SysUtils;

{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}

type    
  TFooAncestor  = class
    procedure HiThere; virtual; abstract;
  end;
  TBarA = class(TFooAncestor)
    procedure HiThere; override;
  end;
  TBarB = class(TFooAncestor)
    procedure HiThere; override;
  end;
  TFoo<T: TFooAncestor, constructor> = class
    private
      FFooAncestor: T;
    public
      constructor Create;
      property SomeBar : T read FFooAncestor write FFooAncestor;
  end;

procedure TBarA.HiThere;
begin
  WriteLn('Hi from A');
end;

procedure TBarB.HiThere;
begin
  WriteLn('Hi from B');
end;

constructor TFoo<T>.Create;
begin
  inherited;
  FFooAncestor := T.Create;
end;

var
  FooA : TFoo<TBarA>;
  FooB : TFoo<TBarB>;
begin
  FooA := TFoo<TBarA>.Create;
  FooB := TFoo<TBarB>.Create;
  FooA.SomeBar.HiThere;
  FooB.SomeBar.HiThere;
  ReadLn;
end.

Answer 3

Use interfaces. Something like this (Off the top of my head, based on your description.....)

type

  IBikeWheel = interface
    ...
  end;

  IXYZ = interface
    ...
  end;

  IFrontWheel = interface(IBikeWheel)
    ...
  end;


  TBike = class
    ...
  end;

  TBikeWheel = class(TObject, IBikeWheel);

  TBikeWheelXYZ = class(TBikeWheel, IXYZ);

  TBikeFrontWheelXYZ = class(TBikeWheelXYZ, IFrontWheel);

Then implement classes for the interfaces that do what the corresponding classes in your old (presumably C/C++) library does and instantiate them in the corresponding class's constructor.