In Python, a child class can inherit methods from its parent class. Sometimes, you need to call a method defined in the parent class from within the child class. There are a couple of ways to achieve this, each with its own use cases.

Calling Parent Methods Directly

One straightforward approach is to directly reference the parent class and call the method. This is generally applicable when you don’t need to explicitly deal with multiple inheritance complexities. As noted on Stack Overflow, AnyClass.whatever will search AnyClass‘s ancestors if AnyClass doesn’t define/override the method [[1]].

Such as:

class Parent:
    def hello(self):
        return "Hello from Parent"

class Child(Parent):
    def hello(self):
        return Parent.hello(self) + " and Child"

child = Child()
print(child.hello())  # Output: Hello from Parent and Child

“AnyClass.whatever is going to look up whatever in AnyClass ‘s ancestors if AnyClass doesn’t define/override it.”

Using super()

The super() function provides a way to access methods of the parent class, especially useful in scenarios involving multiple inheritance. It ensures that the method resolution order (MRO) is followed correctly. However,it’s crucial that all classes in the inheritance hierarchy use super() properly for it to work as expected [[1]].

Here’s an example:

class Parent:
    def hello(self):
        return "Hello from Parent"

class Child(Parent):
    def hello(self):
        return super().hello() + " and Child"

child = Child()
print(child.hello())  # Output: Hello from Parent and Child

super() is especially helpful when you need to extend the functionality of a parent’s method without fully rewriting it. It also simplifies the code when dealing with complex inheritance structures.