Chapter 6: Intro to OOP

This chapter begins your introduction to classes and objects in Java. Here you learn the about abstract data typing through classes, objects and methods. Abstract data typing produces code that is much easier to read, understand and maintain.

In this chapter you learn

• A brief history of programming
• What a class is, what an object is, and the difference between them
• What a member variable is, what a local variable is, and the difference between them
• What a method is
• How to passing arguments to methods
• How to return values from methods
• Constructors
• toString methods
• Access control with public and private
• Static methods and fields

• Example 6.1: A Web Site Class
• Example 6.2: Create and Print a New Website
• Example 6.3: A Web Site Class with a Print Method
• Example 6.4: Using the Print Method
• Example 6.5: A Website Class With No Public Fields
• Example 6.6: An OOPTest that uses the set methods
• Example 6.7: A Web Site Class with get methods
• Example 6.8: A Web Site Class with a constructor
• Example 6.9: An OOPTest that uses the constructor
• Example 6.10: A Web Site class witha toString method
• Example 6.11: An OOPTest that uses the constructor
• Example 6.12: A website class with a static version number