Encapsulation is the technique of making the fields in a class private and providing access to the fields via public methods.
If a field is declared private, it cannot be accessed by anyone outside the class, thereby hiding the fields within the class. For this reason, encapsulation is also referred to as data hiding.
Encapsulation can be described as a protective barrier that prevents the code and data being randomly accessed by other code defined outside the class.
Access to the data and code is tightly controlled by an interface.
The main benefit of encapsulation is the ability to modify our implemented code without breaking the code of others who use our code.
With this feature Encapsulation gives maintainability, flexibility and extensibility to our code.
Let us look at an example that depicts encapsulation:
/* File name : EncapTest.java */
public class EncapTest{
private String name;
private String idNum;
private int age;
public int getAge(){
return age;
}
public String getName(){
return name;
}
public String getIdNum(){
return idNum;
}
public void setAge( int newAge){
age = newAge;
}
public void setName(String newName){
name = newName;
}
public void setIdNum( String newId){
idNum = newId;
}
}
The public methods are the access points to this class's fields from the outside java world.
Normally these methods are referred as getters and setters. Therefore any class that wants to access the variables should access them through these getters and setters.
The variables of the EncapTest class can be access as below::
/* File name : RunEncap.java */
public class RunEncap{
public static void main(String args[]){
EncapTest encap = new EncapTest();
encap.setName("James");
encap.setAge(20);
encap.setIdNum("12343ms");
System.out.print("Name : " + encap.getName()+
" Age : "+ encap.getAge());
}
}
This would produce following result:
Name : James Age : 20
Benefits of Encapsulation:
The fields of a class can be made read-only or write-only.
A class can have total control over what is stored in its fields.
The users of a class do not know how the class stores its data. A class can change the data type of a field, and users of the class do not need to change any of their code.
Abstraction refers to the ability to make a class abstract in OOP. An abstract class is one that cannot be instantiated. All other functionality of the class still exists, and its fields, methods, and constructors are all accessed in the same manner.
You just cannot create an instance of the abstract class.
If a class is abstract and cannot be instantiated, the class does not have much use unless it is subclassed.
This is typically how abstract classes come about during the design phase. A parent class contains the common functionality of a collection of child classes, but the parent class itself is too abstract to be used on its own.
Use the abstract keyword to declare a class abstract.
The keyword appears in the class declaration somewhere before the class keyword.
/* File name : Employee.java */
public abstract class Employee
{
private String name;
private String address;
private int number;
public Employee(String name, String address, int number)
{
System.out.println("Constructing an Employee");
this.name = name;
this.address = address;
this.number = number;
}
public double computePay()
{
System.out.println("Inside Employee computePay");
return 0.0;
}
public void mailCheck()
{
System.out.println("Mailing a check to " + this.name
+ " " + this.address);
}
public String toString()
{
return name + " " + address + " " + number;
}
public String getName()
{
return name;
}
public String getAddress()
{
return address;
}
public void setAddress(String newAddress)
{
address = newAddress;
}
public int getNumber()
{
return number;
}
}
Notice that nothing is different in this Employee class. The class is now abstract, but it still has three fields, seven methods, and one constructor.
Feb 12, 2013
