MATLAB: Object Oriented Programming question: creating child objects and sum one property of all children and the parent

childreninheritanceMATLABobject-orientedoopparent

Hi,
I'm just getting into matlab OOP and got stuck in creating child ojbects. I have a class like
classdef myClass
  properties
    myVar;
    myNumber;
    myName;
  end
  
  methods
    function m = myClass(name,number,value)
      m.myName = name;
      m.myVar = value;
      m.myNumber = number;
    end
    
    function printTotalValue(name)
      disp(['Total value: ' num2str(name.myVar)]);
    end
  end
end
I can see the "total value" by running the commands
clear classes
a = myClass('apa',1,10);
a.printTotalValue;
I now want to create a hierarchy of objects, and whenever I call object.printTotalValue I want it to sum it's value and the value of all it's children, grand children etc. But how do I do this?
I want to index the hiearchy by myNumber, like this:
ObjNo1     (myName = "object 1"; myVar=3; myNumber=1)
.Obj11     (myName = "object 11"; myVar=1; myNumber=11)
..Obj111     (myName = "object 111"; myVar=30; myNumber=111)
..Obj112     (myName = "object 112"; myVar=15; myNumber=112)
..Obj113     (myName = "object 113"; myVar=2; myNumber=113)
.Obj2     (myName = "object 2"; myVar=1; myNumber=2)
.Obj3     (myName = "object 3"; myVar=23; myNumber=3)
..Obj31     (myName = "object 31"; myVar=6; myNumber=31)
And then I want to be able to call ObjNo113.printTotalValue and get 2 as result, ObjNo11.printTotalValue and get 1+30+15+2=48 as result, ObjNo2.printTotalValue and get 2 as result, etc…
But: *How do I create child objects like this? * *How do I get a list of all child objects and overload the printTotalValue function so it sums all the myVar's for the children objects? *
I've been googling for quite some time but can't seem to find an answer that gets me through this, so any help would be appreciated!
Thanks in advance, Anders

Best Answer

You could try something like this:
classdef myClass < hgsetget
  properties
        ParentObject=[];
        ChildObjects={};
    myVar;
    myNumber;
    myName;
  end
  
  methods
  function thisObject = myClass(name,number,value)
    thisObject.myName = name;
    thisObject.myVar = value;
    thisObject.myNumber = number;
  end
          function addChild(thisObject, newObject)
              thisObject.ChildObjects{end+1}=newObject;
              newObject.ParentObject=thisObject;
          end
          function object=getChild(thisObject, n)
              object=thisObject.ChildObjects{n};
          end
  end
end
Then at the command line:
>> a=myClass('Eve', 1, 22);
>> a.addChild(myClass('Cain',2,99));
>> a.addChild(myClass('Abel',3,999));
>> a.getChild(1).addChild(myClass('Enoch',4,1999));
printTotalValue can then just search upwards using the ParentObject entry until it finds it empty.
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