Oops with Foxpro

Oops with Foxpro

Object Orientation In FoxPro
Editorial Note:

This article was written by Gregory L. Reichert and uploaded to the CompuServe Fox Forum on the 19th January 1995. The text remains unaltered although I have taken the liberty of tidying up the code samples. The casual Web surfer should be warned, there's some pretty complex stuff here.

Malc.

Introduction:

Object Orientation Programming in FoxPro? Yes. The OOPs technique is not an alternate form of programming, but am extension of Structure Programming. Much the same way that structure programming inherits commands and features of unstructure languages like BASIC and Assembler, OOPs should inherit structure programming languages features. The general notion is to enhance the programming style, and still maintain backward compatibility. In the case of implementing OOPs into FoxPro, this should be a rule. The technique I about to describe is simple and requires no external modules. The implementation uses straight forward fox features, and allows greater flexibility then found in many of the other object orientated languages.

Background:

Recently there has been a lot
of talk about Object Orientation, but until Nantucket announced Clipper 5.0, there has been no evidence of it finding its way to the xBase dialects.

But before we jump into how to construct and using object, let's determine what a object is. The world is full of objects. Everywhere we look, we find objects. These objects are described by their characteristics and behaviors. The same definition applies to software objects. For example, take a book of matches, it can be described to a computer as something of X width, Y height, containing Z items, and etc. This does little to help define what the matches really are, it simple describes the characteristics, but does nothing to describe its usage or behavior. A set of separate routines need to be designed to implement the matches usage. Currently, FoxPro offers little means of binding the...