OOps concepts

Object Oriented Programming Concepts

Object

             An object is a software bundle of related state and behaviour. Software objects are often used to model the real-world objects that you find in everyday life. Objects are the basic unit of object orientation with behaviour, identity. These are part of a class but are not the same. An object is expressed by the variable and methods within the objects. Again these variables and methods are distinguished from each other as instant variables, instant methods and class variable and class methods.

Class

           A class is a blueprint or prototype from which objects are created. It is the central point of OOP and that contains data and codes with behaviour. In Java everything happens within class and it describes a set of objects with common behaviour. The class definition describes all the properties, behaviour, and identity of objects present within that class. As far as types of classes are concerned, there are predefined classes in languages like C++ and Pascal. But in Java one can define his/her own types with data and code.

Methods

              We know that a class can define both attributes and behaviors. Again attributes are defined by variables and behaviors are represented by methods. In other words, methods define the abilities of an object.

Inheritance

               Inheritance provides a powerful and natural mechanism for organizing and structuring your software. This is the mechanism of organizing and structuring software program. Though objects are distinguished from each other by some additional features but there are objects that share certain things common. In object oriented programming classes can inherit some common behavior and state from others. Inheritance in OOP allows to define a general class and later to organize some other classes simply adding some details with the old class definition. This saves work as the special class inherits all the properties of the old general class and as a programmer you only require the new features. This helps in a better data analysis, accurate coding and reduces development time.

As the name suggests, inheritance means to take something that is already made. It is one of the most important feature of Object Oriented Programming. It is the concept that is used for reusability purpose. Inheritance is the mechanism through which we can derived classes from other classes. The derived class is called as child class or the subclass or we can say the extended class and the class from which we are deriving the subclass is called the base class or the parent class. To derive a class in java the keyword extends is used. To clearly understand the concept of inheritance you must go through the following example.

The concept of inheritance is used to make the things from general to more specific e.g. When we hear the word vehicle then we got an image in our mind that it moves from one place to another place it is used for traveling or carrying goods but the word vehicle does not specify whether it is two or three or four wheeler because it is a general word. But the word car makes a more specific image in mind than vehicle, that the car has four wheels . It concludes from the example that car is a specific word and vehicle is the general word. If we think technically to this example then vehicle is the super class (or base class or parent class) and car is the subclass or child class because every car has the features of it's parent (in this case vehicle) class.

The following kinds of inheritance are there in java.

                  • Simple Inheritance

                  • Multilevel Inheritance

Abstraction

               Abstraction refers to the ability to make a class abstract in OOP. An abstract class is one that cannot be instantiated. All other functionality of the class still exists, and its fields, methods, and constructors are all accessed in the same manner. You just cannot create an instance of the abstract class.

If a class is abstract and cannot be instantiated, the class does not have much use unless it is subclassed. This is typically how abstract classes come about during the design phase. A parent class contains the common functionality of a collection of child classes, but the parent class itself is too abstract to be used on its own.

Encapsulation

             Encapsulation is the technique of making the fields in a class private and providing access to the fields via public methods. If a field is declared private, it cannot be accessed by anyone outside the class, thereby hiding the fields within the class. For this reason, encapsulation is also referred to as data hiding.

Encapsulation can be described as a protective barrier that prevents the code and data being randomly accessed by other code defined outside the class. Access to the data and code is tightly controlled by an interface.The main benefit of encapsulation is the ability to modify our implemented code without breaking the code of others who use our code. With this feature Encapsulation gives maintainability, flexibility and extensibility to our code.

Polymorphism

              Polymorphism is the ability of an object to take on many forms. The most common use of polymorphism in OOP occurs when a parent class reference is used to refer to a child class object.Any java object that can pass more than on IS-A test is considered to be polymorphic. In Java, all java objects are polymorphic since any object will pass the IS-A test for their own type and for the class Object.It is important to know that the only possible way to access an object is through a reference variable. A reference variable can be of only one type. Once declared the type of a reference variable cannot be changed.The reference variable can be reassigned to other objects provided that it is not declared final. The type of the reference variable would determine the methods that it can invoke on the object.A reference variable can refer to any object of its declared type or any subtype of its declared type. A reference variable can be declared as a class or interface type.

Dynamic Binding

               It is the way that provide the maximum functionality to a program for a specific type at runtime. There are two type of binding first is dynamic binding and second is static binding.