hi all, could anyone please explain in simple way why the Getter and Setter methods are designed to get an access to attributes instead of making those attributes public and accessing them directly? I would appreciate if you also could forward me a link that talks about concepts like this. thanks.
Richard Jensen
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Joined: May 14, 2003
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Originally posted by Namaste Sathi: hi all, could anyone please explain in simple way why the Getter and Setter methods are designed to get an access to attributes instead of making those attributes public and accessing them directly? I would appreciate if you also could forward me a link that talks about concepts like this. thanks.
The short answer is encapsulation -- a core concept of Object Oriented programming. If only methods can access your private data, then you can do a variety of things:
Change underlying data structure
Delegate the access to another object
Instrument the access or perform other checks
etc.
Oh, and having accessor methods allows you to synchronize reads and writes to the data so you can prevent race conditions. [ June 07, 2003: Message edited by: Richard Jensen ]
The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny - it is the light that guides your way. - Heraclitus
Don Kiddick
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That's great Ilja ! Another point is that accssors (as opposed to direct variable access) seperate implementation from interface. All clients should care about is that an object can provide a value not that it is internally implemented as an instance variable, a database call or whatever. D.
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