Object-Oriented Concepts and Constructs

Four fundamental OOP concepts

• Encapsulation
• Inheritance
• Polymorphism
• Abstraction

Encapsulation

Encapsulation in Java is a mechanism of wrapping the data (variables) and code acting on the data (methods) together as a single unit. In encapsulation the variables of a class will be hidden from other classes, and can be accessed only through the methods of their current class, therefore it is also known as data hiding.

To achieve encapsulation in Java:

• Declare the variables of a class as private.
• Provide public setter and getter methods to modify and view the variables values.

TestEncapsulation.java

public class TestEncapsulation{
    
    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 setXXX() and getXXX() methods are the access points of the instance variables of the TestEncapsulation class. 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 accessed as below:

/* File name : RunEncapsulation.java */

public class RunEncapsulation{
    public static void main(String args[]){
        TestEncapsulation encap = new TestEncapsulation();
        encap.setName("James");
        encap.setAge(20);
        encap.setIdNum("12343ms");
        
        System.out.print("Name : " + encap.getName() + " Age : " + encap.getAge());
    }
}

This would produce the 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.

Inheritance

Inheritance can be defined as the process where one class acquires the properties (methods and fields) of another. With the use of inheritance the information is made manageable in a hierarchical order.

The class which inherits the properties of other is known as subclass (derived class, child class) and the class whose properties are inherited is known as superclass (base class, parent class).

extends Keyword:

extends is the keyword used to inherit the properties of a class. Below given is the syntax of extends keyword:

class Super{
    ...
    ...
}


class Sub extends Super{
    ...
    ...
}

Polymorphism

Abstraction