In the C#, the interface is a definition of a role or you can say a group of abstract actions. It defines what sort of behavior a certain object must exhibit, without specifying how this behavior should be implemented. It can neither be directly instantiated as an object nor can data members be defined. So, an interface is nothing but a collection of method and property declarations.
interface keyword.The following code shows how to define a simple interface.
public interface IShape
{
double X { get; set; }
double Y { get; set; }
void Draw();
double CalculateArea();
}
It is like an abstract class because all the methods which are declared in the interface are abstract. It cannot have a method body and cannot be instantiated.
Implementing an interface is simply done by inheriting it and defining all the methods and properties declared by the interface as shown below.
public class Rectangle : IShape
{
public double X { get; set; }
public double Y { get; set; }
public Rectangle(double x, double y)
{
X = x;
Y = y;
}
public double CalculateArea()
{
return X * Y;
}
public void Draw()
{
Console.WriteLine("Draw rectangle of X = {0}, Y = {1}.", X, Y);
}
}
Although a class can inherit from one class only, it can implement any number of interfaces. To implement multiple interfaces, separate them with a comma.
public class Rectangle : IShape, IDrawable
Now we can create a Rectangle object and assign it to a variable of the IShape type.
IShape rectangle = new Rectangle(5, 7);
rectangle.Draw();
Console.WriteLine("The area of the rectangle is " + rectangle.CalculateArea());
Let's run the above code and you will see the following output.
Draw rectangle of X = 5, Y = 7.
The area of the rectangle is 35
All the examples related to the interfaces are available in the Interfaces.cs file of the source code. Download the source code and try out all the examples for better understanding.