What is the difference between an interface and abstract class?

The main point is that:

Abstract is object oriented. It offers the basic data an 'object' should have and/or functions it should be able to do. It is concerned with the object's basic characteristics: what it has and what it can do. Hence objects which inherit from the same abstract class share the basic characteristics (generalization).

Interface is functionality oriented. It defines functionalities an object should have. Regardless what object it is, as long as it can do these functionalities, which are defined in the interface, it's fine. It ignores everything else. An object/class can contain several (groups of) functionalities; hence it is possible for a class to implement multiple interfaces.

4 years ago

An abstract class is a class that is only partially implemented by the programmer. It may contain one or more abstract methods. An abstract method is simply a function definition that serves to tell the programmer that the method must be implemented in a child class.

An interface is similar to an abstract class; indeed interfaces occupy the same namespace as classes and abstract classes. For that reason, you cannot define an interface with the same name as a class. An interface is a fully abstract class; none of its methods are implemented and instead of a class sub-classing from it, it is said to implement that interface.

4 years ago

The key technical differences between an abstract class and an interface are:

Abstract classes can have constants, members, method stubs (methods without a body) and defined methods, whereas interfaces can only have constants and methods stubs.

Methods and members of an abstract class can be defined with any visibility, whereas all methods of an interface must be defined as public (they are defined public by default).

When inheriting an abstract class, a concrete child class must define the abstract methods, whereas an abstract class can extend another abstract class and abstract methods from the parent class don't have to be defined.

Similarly, an interface extending another interface is not responsible for implementing methods from the parent interface. This is because interfaces cannot define any implementation.

A child class can only extend a single class (abstract or concrete), whereas an interface can extend or a class can implement multiple other interfaces.

A child class can define abstract methods with the same or less restrictive visibility, whereas a class implementing an interface must define the methods with the exact same visibility (public).

4 years ago