CSCI A202 - Introduction to Programming (II)

Lecture 9: Classes and Objects (I)

1. Introduction

Java programs are built from classes.

From a class definition you can create any number of

objects

(Think of a class as a factory with blueprints and instructions to build gadgets - objects are the gadgets the factory makes. Each class is a factory, and the factory can make 0, 1, or more gadgets.)

Here's a declaration of a simple class that might represent a point on a two-dimensional plane:

class Point {
  public double x, y; 
}

new Point();

All objects in Java are accessed via object references - any variable that appears to hold an object actually contains a reference to that object.

p = new Point();

Objects in Java have a type; the type is the object's class.

1. fields

   Fields are data belonging either to the class itself or to objects of the class. They make up the state of the object or class. Fields store results of computations performed by the methods (*).

2. methods

   Methods are collections of statements that operate on the fields to manipulate the state. Methods contain the executable code of a class. The ways in which methods are invoked, and the statements contained within these methods, is what ultimately directs program execution.

• has two fields representing the x and y coordinates of a point
• and has (as yet) no methods.

The fields in objects are known as instance variables, because there is a unique copy of the field in each object (instance) of the class.

Point lowerLeft = new Point(); 
Point upperRight = new Point(); 
Point middlePoint = new Point(); 

lowerleft.x = 0.0;
lowerleft.y = 0.0;

upperRight.x = 1280.0;
upperRight.y = 1024.0;

middlePoint.x = 640.0;
middlePoint.y = 512.0;

double d = lowerLeft.distance(upperRight); // [1]

Per-object fields are usually what you need. You usually want a field in one object to be distinct from the similarly named field in every other object instantiated from that class.

Sometimes, though, you want fields that are shared among all objects of that class.

The shared variables are known as class variables - variables specific to the class as opposed to objects of the class. In Java, you obtain class-specific fields by declaring them static, and they are therefore sometimes called static fields.

Keep in mind:

1. (instance) fields == instance variables == one per object (or gadget)

2. static fields == class variables == one per class (or factory)

   A static field is there no matter how many objects are created, even if none are created. It relates to the class not to the instances (or objects) of the class.

In addition to these kinds of variables methods can use (as local workspace, or scratch paper) method variables and parameters. They are gone when the method terminates and they are different from instance and class variables. These method variables are the ones with which you have worked in A201.

Members of a class can have various levels of visibility. The public declaration of x and y in the Point class means that any code with access to a Point can read or modify those values. (Other levels of visibility limit member access to code in the class itself, or to other related classes).

Objects of the Point class as defined above are exposed to manipulation by any code that has a reference to a Point object, because its fields are declared public. (See the code snippet above). The real benefits of object orientation, however, come from hiding the implementation of a class behind operations performed on its internal data. In Java, operations of a class are delcared via its methods - instructions that operate on an object's data to obtain results. Methods access implementation details that are otherwise hidden from other objects. Hiding data behind methods so that it is inaccessible to other objects is the fundamental basis of data encapsulation.

Methods have zero or more parameters. A method can return a value, or it can be declared void to indicate that it does not return any value.

A method's statements appear in a block of code between curly braces { and } that follow the method's name and the declaration of its signature.

The signature is the name of the method and the number, order and types of the method's parameters.

We enhance the Point class with a simple clear method.

class Point {
  double x, y; 
  public void clear() {
    x = 0; 
    y = 0; 
  } 
  public double distance (Point theOtherPoint) {
    double xDiff, yDiff; 
    xDiff = x - theOtherPoint.x;
    yDiff = y - theOtherPoint.y;
    return Math.sqrt(xDiff * xDiff + yDiff * yDiff); 
  } 
}

Inside a method, fields and other methods of the class can be named directly - we can simply say x and y without an explicit object reference.

Objects in general do not operate directly on the data of other objects although, as we saw in the Point class, a class can make its fields publicly accessible. (In general, though, well-designed classes hide their data so that it can be changed only by methods of that class.

To invoke a method, you provide an object reference and the method name, separated by a dot. Same rule applies for instance or class variables.

Parameters are passed to the method as a comma-separated list of values enclosed in parentheses. Methods that take no parameters still require the parentheses, with nothing between them.

The object on which the method is invoked (the object receiving the object invocation) is often known as the receiving object (or the receiver).

A method can return a single value as a result. To return more than one value from a method, create an object whose sole purpose is to hold return values in a single unit, and return that object.

We have also enhanced the Point class with a distance method. The distance method accepts another point object as a parameter, computes the Euclidean distance between itself and the other point, and returns a double precision floating-point result.

Based on our lowerLeft and upperRight objects created earlier in this section one could invoke distance as indicated in line [1] in the first code snippet above. Also note that so far we have been talking only about instance (or per object) methods.

Occasionally, the receiving object needs to know its own reference.

For example, the receiving object might want to add itself to a list of objects somewhere.

An implicit reference called this is available to (instance) methods,

and this is a reference to the current (receiving) object.

The following definition of clear is equivalent to the one just presented:

public void clear() {
  this.x = 0; 
  this.y = 0; 
}

The this reference can also be used to explicitly name the members of the current object. Here's another one of Point's methods called move that sets the x and y fields to specified values.

class Point {
  double x, y; 
  public static Point origin = new Point();  // explain! 
  public void clear() {
    this.x = 0; 
    this.y = 0; 
  } 
  public double distance (Point theOtherPoint) {
    double xDiff, yDiff; 
    xDiff = x - theOtherPoint.x;
    yDiff = y - theOtherPoint.y;
    return Math.sqrt(xDiff * xDiff + yDiff * yDiff); 
  } 
  public void move(double x, double y) {
    this.x = x; 
    this.y = y; 
  } 
}

But then those parameters have the same names as Point's fields, and therefore the parameter names are said to hide the field names.

(If we simply write

x = x

this.x

So we review and say once again that variables could belong to

• an instance
• a class
• a method

Just as you can have per-class (static) fields, you can also have per-class (static) methods, often known as class methods.

Class methods are usually intended to do class-like operations specific to the class itself, and usually on static fields, not on specific instances of that class. Class methods are declared using the static keyword, and are therefore also known as static methods.

A static method cannot directly access non-static members.

When a static method is invoked, there's no specific object reference for the method to operate on, (so using this in a static method is completely inappropriate and causes an error).

An explicit object reference can be passed to the static method as a parameter if we want to work on (or with) a certain specific instance, but in general static methods do class kind of operations and non-static methods do object kind of things.

This is the end of the introduction. Now let's go over the same things again and in a more systematic manner.

2. Reinforcing These Concepts

The fundamental unit of programming in Java is the class. Classes contain methods - collections of executable code that are the focus of computation. Classes also provide the structure for objects, plus the mechanism to manufacture objects from the class definitions (the so-called constructors).

You can compute with only primitive types - integer, floating-point, and so on - but almost any interesting Java program will create and manipulate objects.

Each object is an instance of a class.

A newly created object is given an initial state.

When a method is invoked on an object, the class is examined to find the code to be run.

The basics of a class are:

• its fields (data)

• and its methods (code to manipulate the data)

class Body {
  public long idNum; 
  public String nameFor;
  public Body orbits; 

  public static long nextID = 0; 
}

A class declaration creates a type name in Java, so that references to objects of that type can be declared with a simple

Body mercury;

The declaration does not create an object - it declares only a reference to a Body object. The reference is initially null, and the object referenced by mercury does not actually exist until you create it explicitly. (In this respect Java is different from languages where objects are created when you declare variables - this just for the record.)

This first version of Body is poorly designed. This is intentional: we will demonstrate the value of certain language features as we improve the class in this chapter.

Recall that a class's variables are called fields; the Body class's nameFor and orbits are examples. They are instance variables. y

Every Body object has its own specific instances of these fields:

• a long that uniquely identifies the body from all others

• a String that is its name

• and a reference to another Body around which it orbits

Changing the orbits field in one Body object does not affect the orbits field in any other Body object.

Sometimes, though, you want only one instance of a field shared by all objects of a class.

You obtain such fields by declaring them static, so they are called static fields or class variables.

When you declare a static field in a class, all objects created from that class share a single copy of that field.

In our case Body has one static field, nextID, which contains the next body identifier to use.

The nextID field is initialized to zero when the class is initialized after it is loaded and linked.

We will see below that each newly created Body object will have the current value of nextID as its identifier.

All fields and methods of a class are always available to (the) code (that is described) in the class itself. Members declared private are accessible only in the class itself). Members declared public are accessible anywhere the class is accessible, and they are inherited by (ahem!) subclasses.

We declared the Body class's fields public because programmers need access to them to do the work the class is designed for. In a later version of the Body class, we will see that such a design is not usually a good idea.

Body sun = new Body(); 
sun.idNum = Body.nextID++;
sun.nameFor = "Sol"; 
sun.orbits = null; // in solar system sun in the middle

Body earth = new Body();
earth.idNum = Body.nextID++;
earth.nameFor = "Earth"; 
earth.orbits(sun); 

First we declare two references (sun and earth) to hold objects of type Body. As mentioned before, these declarations do not create objects; they only declare variables that reference objects. The references are initially null and the objects they may reference must be created explicitly.

We create the sun using the new operator. When you create an object with the new operator, you specify the type of object you want to create and any parameters to its construction.

The Java runtime system allocates enough space to store the fields of the object and initializes it in ways you will soon see. When initialization is complete, the runtime system returns a reference to the new object.

Having created a new Body object, we initialize its variables. Each Body object needs a unique identifier, which it gets from the static nextID field of Body. The code must increment nextID so that the next Body object created will get a unique identifier.

This example builds a solar system model. In this model, the Sun is in the center, and sun's orbits field is null because it doesn't orbit anything. When we create and initialize earth, we set its orbits field to sun. A Moon object that orbited the Earth would have its orbits field set to earth.

Constructors

A newly created object is given an initial state. Fields can be initialized with a value when they are declared, which is sometimes sufficient to ensure a correct initial state (the rule is that if no value is assigned to a field it will be a zero, \u0000, false or null, depending on its type). But often you need more than simple data initialization to create the initial state; the creating code may need to supply initial data, or perform operations that cannot be expressed as simple assignment.

For purposes other than simple initialization, classes can have constructors. Constructors have the same name as the class they initialize. Like methods they take zero or more parameters, but constructors are not methods and thus have no return type. Parameters, if any, are provided between the parentheses that follow the type name when the object is created with new. Constructors are invoked after the instance variables of a newly created object of the class have been assigned their default initial values, and after their explicit initializers are executed.

This improved version of the Body class uses constructors to set up the initial state, partly by initialization and partly by the constructor:

class Body {
  public long idNum; 
  public String name = "<unnamed>"; 
  public Body orbits = null; 

  private static long nextID = 0; 

  Body() {
    idNum = nextID++; 
  } 
}

By moving responsibility for idNum generation inside the Body class, we have prevented errors of this kind. The Body constructor is now the only entity that assigns idNum, and is therefore the only entity needing access to nextID. We can and should make nextID private, so that only the Body class can access it. By doing so, we remove a source of error for programmers using the Body class.

We also are now free to change the way idNums are assigned to Body objects. A future implementation of this class might, for example, look up the name in a database of known astronomical entities and assign a new idNum only if an idNum had not already been assigned. This change would not affect any existing code, because that existing code wouldn't have been involved at all in the mechanism for idNum allocation.

The data initializations for name and orbits set them to reasonable values. Therefore, when the constructor returns from the invocation shown below, all data fields in the new Body object have been set to some reasonable initial state. You can then set state in the object to the values you want:

Body sun = new Body(); // idNum is 0
sun.name = "Sol"; 

Body earth = new Body(); // idNum is 1
earth.name = "Earth";
earth.orbits = sun;

The case shown here, where you create a body knowing its name and what it orbits, is likely to be fairly common. You can provide another constructor that takes both the name and the orbited body:

Body(String bodyName, Body orbitsAround) {
  this(); 
  name = bodyName; 
  orbits = orbitsAround; 
}

Body sun = new Body("Sol", null); 
Body earth = new Body("Earth", sun); 

Some classes always require that the creator supply certain kinds of data. For example, your application might require that all Body objects have a name. To ensure that all statements creating Body objects supply a name, you would define all Body constructors with a name parameter.

Here are some common reasons for providing specialized constructors:

• Some classes have no reasonable initial state without parameters

• Providing an initial state is convenient and reasonable when constructing some kinds of objects (the two-argument constructor of Body is an example)

• Constructing an object can be a potentially expensive operation, so you want objects to have a correct initial state when they're created. For example, if each object of a class had a table, a constructor to specify the initial size would enable the object to create the table with the right size from the beginning

• A constructor that isn't public restricts who can create objects using it. (You could, for example, prevent programmers using your package from extending a class by making all its constructors accessible only inside the package. You can also mark as protected constructors that make sense only for subclasses. You may also ignore this comment for now.)

If you don't provide any constructors of any kind in a class, the language provides a default no-arg constructor that does nothing. This constructor is provided automatically only if no other constructors exist because there are classes for which a no-arg constructor would be incorrect (!).

If you want both a no-arg constructor and one or more constructors with arguments, you can explicitly provide a no-arg constructor. The automatically provided no-arg constructor for a class that has no superclass is equivalent to the following

class SimpleClass {
  /** Same as default constructor */ 
  public SimpleClass () { } 
}

Methods

A class's methods typically contain the code that understands and manipulates an object's state. Some classes have public fields for programmers to manipulate directly, but in most cases this isn't a very good idea. Many objects have tasks that cannot be represented as a simple value to be read or modified, but require computation.

Methods are invoked as operations on objects via references using the . (dot) operator:

objectReference.methodName(parameters)

public String toString() {
  String desc = idNum + " (" + name + ")"; 
  if (orbits != null) 
    desc += " orbits " + orbits.toString(); 
  return desc; 
}

The toString method is special. If an object has a method named toString that takes no parameters and returns a String, it is invoked to get a String when that object is used in a string concatenation using the + operator. In these expressions:

System.out.println("Body " + sun); 
System.out.println("Body " + earth);

Body 0 (Sol)
Body 1 (Earth) orbits 0 (Sol)

If a method does not return any value, the place where a return type would go is filled with a void. In methods that return a value, every path through the method must return a value assignable to a variable of the declared return type.

Parameter Values to Methods

All parameters to methods Java are "call by value" That is, values of parameter variables in a method are copies of the values the invoker specified. If you pass a boolean to a method, its parameter is a copy of whatever value was being passed, and the method can change it without affecting values in the code that invoked the method. For example:

class PassByValue {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    double one = 1.0; 

    System.out.println("before: one = " + one); 
    halveIt(one); 
    System.out.println("after:  one = " + one); 
  } 

  public static void halveIt (double arg) {
    arg /= 2.0; // divide the arg(ument) by two
    System.out.println("halved: arg = " + arg); 
  }
}

before: one = 1
halved: arg = 0.5
after: one = 1

class PassRef {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    Body sirius = new Body("Sirius", null); 

    System.out.println("before: " + sirius); 
    commonName(sirius); 
    System.out.println("after:  " + sirius); 
  } 
  public static void commonName (Body bodyRef) {
    bodyRef.name = "Dog Star"; 
    bodyRef = null; 
  } 
}

before: 0 (Sirius)
after:  0 (Dog Star)

One could draw a picture to show the state of the references just after main invokes invokes commonName. At that point, the two references sirius (in main) and bodyRef (in commonName) both refer to the same underlying object. When commonName changes the field bodyRef.name, the name is changed in the underlying object that the two references share. When commonName changes the value of bodyRef to null, only the value of the bodyRef reference is changed, while the value of sirius remains unchanged, since the parameter bodyRef is a pass-by-value copy of sirius. Inside the method commonName, all you are changing is the value in the parameter variable bodyRef, just as all you changed in halveIt was the value in the parameter variable arg. If changing bodyRef affected the value of sirius in main, the "after" line would say "null". However, the variables bodyRef in commonName and sirius in main both refer to the same underlying object, so the change made inside commonName is reflected in the object that sirius refers to.

Using Methods to Control Access

The Body class with its various constructors is considerably easier to use than its simple data-only form, and we have ensured that the idNum is set both automatically and correctly. But a programmer could still mess up the object by setting its idNum field after construction, because the idNum field is public and therefore exposed to change. The idNum should be read-only data. Read-only in objects is common, but there is no keyword to apply to a field that allows read-only access outside the class.

To enforce read-only access, you must hide the field. You do this by making the idNum field private and providing a new method so that code outside the class can read its value using that method:

class Body {
  private long idNum; // now "private" 

  public String name = "<unnamed>"; 
  public Body orbits = null;
  private static long nextID = 0; 

  Body() {
    idNume = nextID++; 
  }

  public long id() {
    return idNum; 
  }

  // ...

}

Methods that regulate access to internal data are sometimes called accessor methods. You could also use accessor methods to protect the name and orbits fields, and you probably should.

Even if an application doesn't require fields to be read-only, making fields private and adding methods to set and fetch them enables you to add actions that may be needed in the future. If programmers can access a class's fields directly, you have no control over what values they will use or what happens when values are changed.

The this (Host) Reference

We have already seen how you can use an explicit constructor invocation to invoke another one of your class's constructors at the beginning of a constructor. You can also use the special object reference this inside a non-static method, where it refers to the current object on which the method was invoked. The this reference is most commonly used as a way to pass a reference to the current object as a parameter to other methods. Suppose a method requires adding the object to a list of objects awaiting some service. It might look something like this:

Service.add(this);

class Name {
  public String str; 
  Name() {
    str = "<unnamed>"; 
  } 
}

this.str = "<unnamed>"

class SweedishChef {
  String chefsName;

  SweedishChef(String chefsName) {
    this.chefsName = chefsName; 
  } 
}

Deliberately hiding identifiers in this manner is considered good programming practice only in this idiomatic use in constructors and accessor methods.

Overloading Methods

In Java, each method has a signature, which is its name together with the number and types of its parameters. Two methods can have the same name if their signatures have different numbers or types of parameters. This feature is called overloading, because the simple name of the method has overloaded (more than one) meaning. When a programmer invokes a method, the compiler compares the number and type of parameters to find the method that best matches the available signatures. Here are some orbitsAround methods for our Body class.

public Body orbitsAround() {
  return orbits; 
}
public void orbitsAround(Body around) {
  orbits = around; 
}

Static Members

A class has two kinds of members: fields and methods. Each member specifies how it may be accessed and how it may be inherited. Each member can also be made static if so desired.

A static member is a member that is only one per class, rather than one in every object created from that class. For static fields (class variables), there is exactly one variable, no matter how many objects (even zero) there are of the class. The nextID field in our Body class is an example.

The static fields of a class are initialized before any static field in that class is used or any method of that class is run.

y A class can also have static initialization blocks to set up static fields or other necessary states. A static initializer is most useful when simple initialization clauses on the field declaration aren't up to the task of initialization. For example creating a static array and initializing its members often must be done with executable statements.

The order of static initialization within a class is left-to-right and top-to-bottom.

A static method is invoked on behalf of an entire class, not on a specific object instantiated from that class. Such methods are also known as class methods. A static method might perform a general task for all objects of the class -- such as returning the next available serial number or something of that nature.

A static method can access only static variables and static methods of the class. There is no this reference, because there is no specific object being operated upon.

Outside of a class, a static member is usually accessed by using the class name, rather than through an object reference.

The main Method of a Class

Details of invoking a Java application vary from system to system, but whatever the details, you must always provide the name of a Java class that drives the application. When you run a Java program, the system locates and runs the main method for that class. The main method must be public, static, and void (it returns nothing), and it must accept a single argument of type String[] args. Here's an example that prints its parameters:

class Echo {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    for (int i = 0; i < args.length; i++) 
      System.out.print(args[i] + " "); 
    System.out.println(); 
  } 
}

java Echo in here

in here

An application can have any number of main methods, since each class can have one. Only one main is used for any given program. The main that's actually used is specified when the program is run, as Echo was above. Being able to have multiple main methods has one salutary effect -- each class can have a main tests its own code, providing an excellent hook for unit-testing a class.