Defferences between an Abstract class and an Interface - ablealias/asp.net GitHub Wiki

  • Abstract classes can have constants, members, method stubs (methods without a body) and defined methods, whereas interfaces can only have constants and methods stubs.
  • Methods and members of an abstract class can be defined with any visibility, whereas all methods of an interface must be defined as public (they are defined public by default).
  • When inheriting an abstract class, a concrete child class must define the abstract methods, whereas an abstract class can extend another abstract class and abstract methods from the parent class don't have to be defined.
  • Similarly, an interface extending another interface is not responsible for implementing methods from the parent interface. This is because interfaces cannot define any implementation.
  • A child class can only extend a single class (abstract or concrete), whereas an interface can extend or a class can implement multiple other interfaces.
  • A child class can define abstract methods with the same or less restrictive visibility, whereas a class implementing an interface must define the methods with the exact same visibility (public).