Should interfaces inherit interfaces

Posted by dreza on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by dreza
Published on 2012-09-04T20:46:49Z Indexed on 2012/09/04 21:50 UTC
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Although this is a general question it is also specific to a problem I am currently experiencing. I currently have an interface specified in my solution called

public interface IContextProvider
{
   IDataContext { get; set; }
   IAreaContext { get; set; }
}

This interface is often used throughout the program and hence I have easy access to the objects I need. However at a fairly low level of a part of my program I need access to another class that will use IAreaContext and perform some operations off it. So I have created another factory interface to do this creation called:

public interface IEventContextFactory 
{
   IEventContext CreateEventContext(int eventId);
}

I have a class that implements the IContextProvider and is injected using NinJect. The problem I have is that the area where I need to use this IEventContextFactory has access to the IContextProvider only and itself uses another class which will need this new interface. I don't want to have to instantiate this implementation of IEventContextFactory at the low level and would rather work with the IEventContextFactory interface throughout. However I also don't want to have to inject another parameter through the constructors just to have it passed through to the class that needs it i.e.

// example of problem
public class MyClass
{
    public MyClass(IContextProvider context, IEventContextFactory event)
    {
       _context = context;
       _event = event;
    }

    public void DoSomething() 
    {
       // the only place _event is used in the class is to pass it through
       var myClass = new MyChildClass(_event);
       myClass.PerformCalculation();      
    }
}

So my main question is, would this be acceptable or is it even common or good practice to do something like this (interface inherit another an interface):

public interface IContextProvider : IEventContextFactory

or should I consider better alternatives to achieving what I need. If I have not provided enough information to give suggestions let me know and I can provide more.

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