Introduction:
One of the benefits of encapsulation is data protection, so by using encapsulation when the object user want to change or obtain the value of any entity he must ask first, so we can make all validation processes we need.
Encapsulation also gives you the ability to hide unnecessary implementation details from the object user. It simplifies the programming tasks instead of writing many lines of code each time we want the object do the same functionality.
Why Encapsulation?
To understand the importance of encapsulation let us see the following example:
public class Employee
{
public string Name;
public int Age;
}
//creating the object
Employee firstEmp = new Employee();
firstEmp.Name = "Amr!?Ashush";
firstEmp.Age = 50000;
The problem start when the object user set the values of the Employee class, as you saw the Name variable = Amr!?Ashush and the (!?) characters can not be in real world names, and the Employee age also can not be 50000.
Encapsulation gives you the ability to validate the values before the object user change or obtain the value.
There is two ways to create a validation process:
-
Using Accessors and Mutators.
-
Using properties.
Using Accessors and Mutators:
we start first by set the class variables as private then the object user can not change or obtain the values directly.
public class Employee
{
private string Name;
private int Age;
}
//creating the object
Employee firstEmp = new Employee();
//Compile time error
firstEmp.Name = "Amr!?Ashush";
firstEmp.Age = 50000;
We will now add tow methods one to get the value (Accessor) and the other to set the value (Mutator).
These methods will allow us to validate the values before the object user change or obtain the value.
Our employee class will be as follow:
public class Employee
{
private string name;
private int age;
//Age Accessor
public int GetAge()
{ return age; }
//Age Mutator
public void SetAge(int age)
{
if(age > 60)
{
Consol.WriteLine("Employee age can not be more than 60");
}
else
{
this.age = age;
}
}
//Name Accessor
public string GetName()
{ return name; }
//Name Mutator
public void SetName(string name)
{
if (name.IndexOf('?') > 0)
{
Consol.WriteLine("Illegal Character can not be in the name");
}
else
{
this.name = name;
}
}
}
Now the object user must go through the accessor and mutator in order to change or obtain the value, so he can not set illegal value to the entity.
//creating the object
Employee firstEmp = new Employee();
//use mutators (it's OK)
firstEmp.SetName("Amr");
firstEmp.SetAge("23");
//use accessors to get the values
string EmployeeName = firstEmp.GetName();
int EmployeeAge = first Emp.GetAge();
//try to set illegal values (Error)
firstEmp.SetName("Amr?");
firstEmp.SetAge(100);
The result:
Illegal Character can not be in the name
Employee age can not be more than 60
Using Properties:
You can enforce encapsulation by using properties which allow you to access the data in the class.
A single property gives you the ability to set or obtain the value of a variable instead of using tow different methods as accessor and mutator.
Example:
public class Employee
{
private string name;
private int age;
//the name property
public string Name
{
//the accessor
get{ return name; }
//the mutator
set
{ name = value; }
}
}
//creating the object
Employee firstEmp = new Employee();
//using the property to set value
firstEmp.Name = "Amr";
//using the property to get value
string n = firstEmp.Name;
We can use the properties to validate data as follow:
//the name property
public string Name
{
//the accessor
get{ return name; }
//the mutator
set
{
if(name.IndexOf('?') > 0)
{
Consol.WriteLine("Illegal Character can not be in the name");
}
else
{
name = value;
}
}
}
Read Only Properties:
You create a read only property by removing the set block as follow:
//Read only property
public string Name
{
//the accessor
get{ return name; }
}
So if we try to set the value of the name we will get a compile time error
//Compile time error
firstEmp.Name = "Amr";
Static properties:
you can create static properties which can accessed only from the class level. Note that the static properties can operate only static data.
public class Employee
{
private static string firmName;
public static string FirmName
{
get { return firmName; }
set { firmName = value; }
}
}
We are done now, thank you for reading,
see you.