There can be scenario when we would have two interface with the same method name and same type of arguments, same number of arguments and even the return type can be same and we need to implement both the interface in the same class. How to implement the interface in our class? Most of you will be thinking whats so tough in this, just implement the interface and the method and move on. If the signature of the methods in the interface were different then there would have been no problem but here the signature of the methods in two different interface are same and both the interfaces are gonna be implemented in the same class. The two interface are as below.
public interface IA
{
string PrintName();
}
public interface IB
{
string PrintName();
}
From the above code we can infer that we have two interface with names IA and IB and both have a single method named “PrintName”. The signature of both the methods are same and we need to implement the interfaces in our class say “A”. One way of impelementing the interface is as shown below i.e. just having a “public” implementation of the interface method only once.
public class A : IA, IB
{
public A()
{
}
public string PrintName()
{
return this.GetType().Name;
}
}
The above implementation has got a limitation i.e the method “PrintName” is considered to be a common method for all i.e commong method for the class, and for the interfaces IA and IB. If you are writing a code shown below
A a = new A();
IA ia = new A();
IB ib = new A();
Console.WriteLine(a.PrintName());
Console.WriteLine(ia.PrintName());
Console.WriteLine(ib.PrintName());
all the calls to method “PrintName” will give you the same result, the name of the class i.e. “A”. This is because all call to the method goes to the same definition. Now if you want to give different implementation to the methods in interface IA and IB, what will you do? Its also simple, just have two impelementation of the same method and prefix the method names with the interface name as shown below.
public class A : IA, IB
{
public A()
{
}
string IA.PrintName()
{
return “IA PrintName Method”;
}
string IB.PrintName()
{
return “IB PrintName Method”;
}
}
Now the below code will give you different output.
IA ia = new A();
IB ib = new A();
Console.WriteLine(ia.PrintName());// Will print "IA PrintName Method"
Console.WriteLine(ib.PrintName());// Will print "IB PrintName Method"
So this is how two interfaces having the same method signature can be given different implementation in the same class.
