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iOS

Gavin Hobbs
Gavin Hobbs
5,205 Points
Posted by Gavin Hobbs
Gavin Hobbs
5,205 Points

What is the 'super' thing?

What is the 'super' keyword and what does it do? For example, in this video they had me write some of this...

override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()

        funFactLabel.text = "An interesting fact!"
    }

But I didn't really understand what Pasan was saying about the Super.viewDidLoad(). Especially the Super part. Can anyone explain this better than Pasan did? Thanks!

2 Answers

Sarah Hurtgen
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Sarah Hurtgen
Treehouse Project Reviewer
Sarah Hurtgen
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Sarah Hurtgen
Treehouse Project Reviewer

The "super" refers to the super class, or "parent" class, that your current subclass is inheriting from. I don't think I can explain it better than Pasan, but looking at your example I'm guessing you're in the Build a simple iPhone App course, and I'm not sure how much detail he would go into there for subclassing.

I recommend the Object Oriented Swift Course section on Class Inheritance, and specifically, in the second video, Overriding Properties, he explains this concept in more detail.

Hope that helps!

Luke Pettway
Luke Pettway
16,593 Points
Luke Pettway
Luke Pettway
16,593 Points

Super stands for the superclass of the class where the method definition is. It simply specifies where to search for a method should begin. It is usually considered to call super for all function overrides that don't return a value. There could be something going on within the super (parent) that you aren't aware of, and not allowing it to run could cause all sorts of problems, so that's why it is called within the override before you pass in your own changes to the method.