LabVIEW
LOOP Casting Child Object as Parent - To More Generic Class
@TaraCCF wrote:
So imagine I have a parent class called "Sensor" with several children that each represents a different sensor manufacture. I want to create various children and configure specific properties on my Server PC, and stream sensor data over UDP to a Client PC.
The Client PC will request sensor objects over TCP from the server, but it does not need the child objects. Instead, it is better to cast the children as the parent Sensor object so that they can all be handled in the same manner. I have tried to do this using the "To More Generic Class" vi. It kind of works because it removes properties belonging to the child. However, the class name does not actually change. So all methods behave as though it is still cast as a child. Is there a way to change the class name?
So what's the point of having the child classes then? How is client supposed to know what the sensor is and how to interact with it? If you are just trying to tell the server what to do with the sensor, then make a separate interface where the client tells the server what it wants from the sensor. Since you are already trying to remove the dynamic dispatch, then OOP is not required for this communication interface.
To More Specific Class and To More Generic Class only operate on the wire, not on the data. It just tells LabVIEW how to interpret what the wire is. If you want to extract only the parent data from a child class, you'll have to do create a new parent class and copy data manually. I'm a bit confused as to why you need to do this though... I also don't see why you have child classes if you're throwing it away later.
So you still just call the methods from the parent class. Why should you care if a child was passed? In fact, you likely still need the child's data in order to do want you need.
