Create a new ggproto object

Construct a new object with ggproto, test with is.proto, and access parent methods/fields with ggproto_parent.

ggproto(`_class` = NULL, `_inherit` = NULL, ...)

ggproto_parent(parent, self)

is.ggproto(x)

Arguments

_class	Class name to assign to the object. This is stored as the class attribute of the object. This is optional: if NULL (the default), no class name will be added to the object.
_inherit	ggproto object to inherit from. If NULL, don't inherit from any object.
...	A list of members in the ggproto object.
parent, self	Access parent class parent of object self.
x	An object to test.

Details

ggproto implements a protype based OO system which blurs the lines between classes and instances. It is inspired by the proto package, but it has some important differences. Notably, it cleanly supports cross-package inheritance, and has faster performance.

In most cases, creating a new OO system to be used by a single package is not a good idea. However, it was the least-bad solution for ggplot2 because it required the fewest changes to an already complex code base.

Calling methods

ggproto methods can take an optional self argument: if it is present, it is a regular method; if it's absent, it's a "static" method (i.e. it doesn't use any fields).

Imagine you have a ggproto object Adder, which has a method addx = function(self, n) n + self$x. Then, to call this function, you would use Adder$addx(10) -- the self is passed in automatically by the wrapper function. self be located anywhere in the function signature, although customarily it comes first.

Calling methods in a parent

To explicitly call a methods in a parent, use ggproto_parent(Parent, self).

Examples

Adder <- ggproto("Adder",
  x = 0,
  add = function(self, n) {
    self$x <- self$x + n
    self$x
  }
 )
is.ggproto(Adder)
#> [1] TRUE

Adder$add(10)
#> [1] 10
Adder$add(10)
#> [1] 20

Doubler <- ggproto("Doubler", Adder,
  add = function(self, n) {
    ggproto_parent(Adder, self)$add(n * 2)
  }
)
Doubler$x
#> [1] 20
Doubler$add(10)
#> [1] 40