Getter and setter methods are public interfaces to access private class members.
The encapsulation mantra is to make fields private and methods public.
Getter Methods: We can get access to private variables.
Setter Methods: We can modify private fields.
Even though the getter and setter methods do not add new functionality, we can change our mind come back later to make that method
Anywhere a value can be used, a method that returns that value can be added. Instead of:
int x = 1000 - 500
use
int x = 1000 - class_name.getValue();
Suppose we need to store the details of this Person
. This Person
has the fields name
, age
and sex
. Doing this involves creating methods for name
, age
and sex
. Now if we need create another person, it becomes necessary to create the methods for name
, age
, sex
all over again.
Instead of doing this, we can create a bean class(Person)
with getter and setter methods. So tomorrow we can just create objects of this Bean class(Person class)
whenever we need to add a new person (see the figure). Thus we are reusing the fields and methods of bean class, which is much better.