Interfaces

An interface is a syntactic expression which defines an object protocol. An interface has zero or more method signatures, and can be implemented by any object which has methods with equivalent signatures to the interface.

Let’s jump right in:

interface Trivial:
    "A trivial interface."

This interface comes with a docstring, which is not required but certainly a good idea, and nothing else. Any object could implement this interface:

object trivia implements Trivial:
    "A trivial object implementing a trivial interface."

When an object implements an interface, the interface behaves like any other auditor and examines the object for compliance with the object protocol. As with other auditors, the difference between the “implements” and “as” keywords is whether the object is required to pass the auditor:

object levity as Trivial:
    "A trivial object which is proven to implement Trivial."

Let’s look at a new interface. This interface carries some method signatures.

interface GetPut:
    "Getting and putting."
    to get()
    to put(value)

object getAndPut as GetPut:
    "A poor getter and putter."

    to get():
        return "get"

    to put(_):
        null

We can see that getAndPut implements the GetPut interface, but it isn’t very faithful to that interface. Interfaces cannot enforce behavior, only signatures.