Why are we not allowed to specify a constructor in an interface? [duplicate]

Answer 1

Among all the other reasons already posted, keep also in mind the a class can easily implement several interfaces; which constructor should be used then?

Answer 2

Because you cant instantiate an interface, so a constructur doenst make sense.

Answer 3

Because an interface describes behaviour. Constructors aren't behaviour. How an object is built is an implementation detail.

Answer 4

Other answers have already pointed out why it doesn't make sense to have a constructor declaration on an interface. But from your question, I'm guessing that you are probably looking for the abstract factory pattern.

To give an example based on your question: you say that you would like to somehow declare that an 'engine' must be passed to the constructor. You can do this by declaring a separate interface for a construction service like this:

public interface IGadgetFactory
{
   IGadget CreateGadget(Engine engine);
}

Any code which must create IGadget instances can then use an IGadgetFactory instance instead of calling any constructors directly.

Answer 5

Besides the other explanations given here, you'd have to invent a new syntax for calling them anyway, since if you have two or more implementations in scope at the line:

Dim x as new IDoStuff()

Whice implementation gets called?

Answer 6

No you can not have constructors on interfaces for the reasons that have been posted. However you can on abstract classes. Lets say for example you have this base class.

public abstract class ClassOne
{
    protected int _x;
    protected string _s;

    public ClassOne(int x, string s)
    {
        _x = x;
        _s = s;
    }        
}

Notice there is no constructors that takes no argument (default constructor) which means any class that inherits from ClassOne must call the constructor that has 2 arguments.

So this is not valid and will not compile.

public class ClassTwo : ClassOne
{
    public ClassTwo() 
    { }
}

However this is valid and will compile.

public class ClassTwo : ClassOne
{
    public ClassTwo(int x, string s) : base(x, s)
    {  }
}

I would like to point out here that in C# you can only inherit from one base class. Meaning that this may not be the correct solution for particular situation but is something to think about.

Tony.