docs/Subclassing.md
# Subclassing
Creating a Ruby subclass of one of the GObject classes requires following some rules.
First of all, if you override the initializer, you **must** call `super`
otherwise, the underlying GObject pointer will not be created and stored.
Second, GObject objects often have several constructors. GirFFI creates a
separate initializer for each constructor. This allows customization of the
call to super for each initializer. This means you will have to override each
initializer separately, as needed.
As an example, here is a subclass of `Regress::TestSubObj`, a class from
GObjectIntrospection's test suite, adding an extra argument to some of its
constructors.
```
class MyObj < Regress::TestSubObj
attr_reader :animal
def initialize animal
super()
@animal = animal
end
def initialize_from_file animal, file
super(file)
@animal = animal
end
end
o1 = MyObj.new 'dog'
o1.foo # => 'dog'
o2 = MyObj.constructor
o2.foo # => nil
o3 = MyObj.new_from_file 'cat', 'my_file.txt'
o3.foo # => 'cat'
```