Golang Inheritance Guide: Struct Embedding Explained

In Go language, there is no inheritance mechanism like in other object-oriented languages, but similar functionality can be achieved through struct embedding and interfaces.

Nested struct can achieve functionality similar to inheritance. A child struct can contain the fields of a parent struct, thus achieving field inheritance. For example:

type Animal struct {
    Name string
}

type Dog struct {
    Animal
    Breed string
}

func main() {
    dog := Dog{
        Animal: Animal{
            Name: "Buddy",
        },
        Breed: "Labrador",
    }

    fmt.Println(dog.Name) // Output: Buddy
}

Another way to achieve similar functionality to inheritance is to use interfaces. If a struct implements a certain interface, it can then call the methods defined in that interface. For example:

type Animal interface {
    GetName() string
}

type Dog struct {
    Name string
}

func (d Dog) GetName() string {
    return d.Name
}

func main() {
    var animal Animal
    dog := Dog{
        Name: "Buddy",
    }

    animal = dog
    fmt.Println(animal.GetName()) // Output: Buddy
}

Although Go language does not provide a traditional inheritance mechanism, similar functionality can be achieved through struct embedding and interfaces.