# Field overloading to flatten struct composition?
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/field-overloading-to-flatten-struct-composition/9325
**Category:** General Usage
**Created:** [February 25, 2018, 10:45pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/field-overloading-to-flatten-struct-composition/9325 "2018-02-25T22:45:52Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@greg\_plowman](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/greg_plowman)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2018, 10:45pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/field-overloading-to-flatten-struct-composition/9325/1 "2018-02-25T22:45:52Z")
I was wondering whether composite type field overloading (introduced in 0.7) could be used to “flatten” access to composed data structures. There has been much discussion about inheritance vs composition, and I was hoping to use composition but access the fields directly, as if inherited.
An example probably helps explain what I mean.
The following works but is probably too slow. Is there a way to make this work efficiently?
```julia
struct Foo
a::Int
b::Int
end
struct Bar
foo::Foo
c::Int
d::Int
end
function Base.getproperty(x::Bar, f::Symbol)
if f in fieldnames(Foo)
getfield(x.foo, f)
else
getfield(x, f)
end
end
foo = Foo(1,2)
bar = Bar(foo,3,4)
bar.a
bar.b
bar.c
bar.d
```
---
### Author:  [@Nosferican](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Nosferican)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2018, 6:40am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/field-overloading-to-flatten-struct-composition/9325/2 "2018-02-26T06:40:52Z")
That seems like a really bad idea. What if `Foo` and `Bar` share same fieldnames? If it makes sense in certain application, the correct design would be to make a good API with accessor methods.