Encapsulation
Computer Science: OCR A Level, topic 2.4.11
Encapsulation
Encapsulation in object-oriented programming is a principle that concerns how data inside the class can be accessed or changed.
Setters and getters
- A setter is a special type of method that sets one of the attributes equal to a specific value.
- A getter is a special type of method that obtains the value of one of the attributes of the object.
Encapsulation
- Each attribute can only be accessed or modified by methods that are set (encapsulated) when defining the class.
- This is also known as 'information hiding'.
- The use of these methods protects the data in the class instance from being tampered with.
Different instances
- An instance of a class should not be able to alter the data of another instance of the same class.
- For example, if you have an instance of a car class called “car1”, its methods should not be able to alter the attributes of another instance of the car class that is also running.
Test yourself on Encapsulation
What term is used for the method that obtains the value of one of the attributes of the object?
An instance of a class can alter the data of another instance of the same class.
True or false?Which method in the code shown is a setter for the object car1?
Which method in the code shown is a getter for the object car1?