object oriented approach in c program - c

Question

I don't have much experience in Object oriented programming.I am trying to create an object in c which will have its own methods.
I have declared structure which have pointers to function. All instance of this variable are going to point same function. But currently I need to initialize every instance of variable as in main (Line 1 and Line 2). So is there any method that will initialize its default value when I declare it?
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
typedef struct serialStr Serial;
struct serialStr
{
void(*init)(Serial*);
void(*open)();
void(*close)();
};
void open()
{
printf("Open Port Success\n");
return;
}
void close()
{
printf("Close port Success\n");
return;
}
void init(Serial* ptr)
{
ptr->open = open;
ptr->close = close;
}
int main()
{
Serial serial,serial_2;
serial.init = init;
serial.init(&serial); // Line1
serial_2.init = init;
serial_2.init(&serial_2); // Line2
serial.open();
//rest of code
serial.close();
serial_2.open();
serial_2.close();
return 0;
}

Answer 1

In C, the standard way would be to declare an initializer macro:
#define SERIAL_INITIALIZER { .init = init, .open = open, /* and others */ }
Serial serial = SERIAL_INITIALIZER;
In most cases in C there is simply no need for dynamic intialization of variables. You only need it for malloced objects.

Answer 2

C++ add some automatization by calling constructor/destructor. In pure C is no way to do so. You should do all steps manually: create and initialize object (call constructor-like function for structure), call functions by pointers from the structure instance, call destructor (it should destroy the instance and free related resources).
If is no polymorphism in your task then use simple way - without pointers to functions, but each function (method) should take pointer to the object.
Common case example:
struct MyStruct
{
// data
};
struct MyStruct* createMyStruct(/* maybe some input */)
{
// create, init and return the structure instance
}
void destoyMyStruct(struct MyStruct* obj)
{
// free resources and delete the instance
}
void doSomeAction(struct MyStruct* obj /* , some other data */)
{
// ...
}
int main()
{
struct MyStruct* object = createMyStruct();
doSomeAction(object);
destoyMyStruct(object);
return 0;
}
Edit 1: macro is only for very simple cases and error-prone way.

Answer 3

Typically, you would do this through "opaque type". Meaning that you declare an object of incomplete type in your header:
typedef struct Serial Serial;
And then in the C file, you place the actual struct definition. This will hide the contents of the struct to the caller (private encapsulation). From your constructor, you could then set up private member functions:
struct Serial
{
void(*init)(void);
void(*open)(void);
void(*close)(void);
};
// private member functions:
static void open (void);
...
// constructor:
Serial* SerialCreate (void)
{
Serial* s = malloc(sizeof (*s));
...
s->open = open;
return s;
}
This means that if you wish to inherit the class, you will only need to change the constructor.
Though of course, if you wish to implement true polymorphism, you don't want to change any code. You could solve this by passing the init function as parameter to the constructor.
header file:
typedef void init_func_t (void);
c file:
// constructor:
Serial* SerialCreate (init_func_t* init)
{
Serial* s = malloc(sizeof (*s));
...
init();
return s;
}
And then from the init function in the inherited class, set all private member functions.